Butter In Olive Oil Cake

Our answer

Nigella's Chocolate Olive Oil Cake (from NIGELLISSIMA) is made with olive oil, though we suspect that it could be made with unsalted butter as long as the cake was made with ground almonds (almond meal) and not flour. However in this case it would not be an "olive oil cake" but a very good gluten free chocolate cake. Butter is approximately 80% fat and 20% water and milk solids, so using butter could make the cake slightly dry if it is made with flour. But ground almonds contain a fair amount of oil and would keep the cake moist.

You would need to use 140g of butter as the equivalent weight, which is 9½ tablespoons. The butter should be melted and cooled slightly, then used in the same way as the oil. If you cream the butter and flour in the traditional way then it may introduce too much air, which would cause the cake to sink more as it cools due to the lack of gluten. However we would mention that we have not tried butter as an alternative and so are unable to guarantee the results.