Can I Make The Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake Gluten Free?

Our answer

Nigella's Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake (from COOK, EAT, REPEAT) has chocolate sponge layers sandwiched with a sublime peanut butter frosting. The sponge is an easy stir-together affair. The frosting is lightened through the addition of some double (or heavy or whipping) cream that is whisked into the mixture at the final stage.

It may be possible to use gluten-free flour for the cake, as a straight 1 for 1 substitution, but it would need to be a blend made specifically for baking. Also, we are not sure that the very thin layers would work that well as gluten-free cakes tend to be quite tender and there is a risk that thinner layers will break and crumble more readily, so it would be preferable to make the sponges in two normal 20cm (8-inch) cake tins and have a 2-layer cake. But please note that as we have not tried the cake with gluten-free flour, we are unable to guarantee the results. You could consider Nigella's Chocolate Tahini Banana Bread, this is a gluten-free loaf cake. However, it has a different texture to the sponge in the Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake so instead of a layer cake you could make the loaf cake, omit the sesame seeds and top the cake with some of the peanut butter frosting (you would need about 1/4 of the recipe).