Salted Butter for Sheet Cake

Our answer

Nigella's Chocolate Sheet Cake recipe (on the Nigella website) lists unsalted butter in the ingredients. Overall Nigella prefers to use unsalted butter, as do many chefs, as it allows the cook to control the salt levels and to add salt to taste. If salted butter is the only option then try to buy a brand that is not too salty.

For the cake base salted butter should be fine as a little salt helps to bring out the flavour of chocolate. But omit the pinch of salt listed in the ingredients. For the icing the saltiness of the butter will be more noticeable and it may depend on your own taste as to whether you think it should be used. We prefer to use butter in baking but if you have a good quality margarine that is not too salty then it could possibly be substituted for the butter in the sheet cake and the icing.