Clementine Cake With Alternative To Almonds

Our answer

Nigella's Clementine Cake (from HOW TO EAT is a gluten-free cake with almonds and cooked and pureed clementines. Ground almonds are a popular choice for baking as they have a fairly neutral flavour and this would remain our preference for the recipe. However, if walnuts are the only option then we suspect that it is possible to use walnuts as an alternative but would caution that sometimes walnuts can have a slight bitter edge, which may affect the flavour of the cake. Walnuts are difficult to blanch/skin but we suspect the skins won't matter in the cake as we have made it with almond meal (ground skin-on almonds).

If you have to grind your own walnuts then we suggest that you do this in a food processor with the sugar from the recipe, as this will help to prevent the walnuts from becoming too oily as they are ground. Tip them out of the food processor before pureeing the clementines, then continue with the recipe.