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Fancy a chocolate cake without flour? Whether you’re looking for a gluten-free cake, or just something a bit lighter than normal chocolate cake, this is definitely worth a try. The recipe is Nigella Lawson’s flourless chocolate and lime cake. You could use orange instead of lime, or omit the fruit altogether if you want a pure chocolate flavour. To make it flourless, the recipe uses ground almonds instead of flour.

Ingredients:

• 150 g dark chocolate, chopped
• 150 unsalted butter
• 6 eggs
• 150 g caster sugar
• 100 g ground almonds
• 4 tsp cocoa powder
• zest and juice of 1 lime
• icing (powdered) sugar for dusting

Melt together the butter and chocolate and leave to cool.

Whisk the eggs and sugar until they are pale and fluffy (Nigella says should be about 3x the volume they started at).

Sift together the cocoa and ground almonds.

Fold the cocoa and almonds into the whisked eggs and sugar, then fold in the melted chocolate and butter. Stir in the lime juice and zest.

Pour the chocolate mixture into a greased 23 cm springform cake tin, the bottom lined with baking parchment.

Bake the cake at 180°C/gas mark 4. Nigella says to bake it for 40-45 minutes until it is firm to the touch but still has a wobble. Mine was ready after 30 minutes, so be careful not to overdo it.

Let the cake cool in its tin on a cooling rack and then unmould it.

Dust with icing sugar. Nigella’s recipe is served with Margarita whipped cream, but it’s lovely just as it is too. Because it’s flourless, it really is nice and light. Sadly, as Nigella says, it’s gluten free, but not calorie free!