Ground almonds in cakes

[AgentProvocateur]

I fancy making a cake tomorrow, and I've found a nice recipe for an orange cake that uses flour and ground almonds, but I hate the taste of almond flavoured things with a passion - marzipan and amaretto etc.

Silly question, but would the cake have this taste? I've never cooked with ground almonds before because of my almondphobia.

Yes , if you are sensitive to it

That's what I thought. Back to the drawing board. Thanks, anyway.

It really depends on the ratio of flour to almonds, mostly ground almonds are used in cakes to add texture, not flavour.

Think of madeira, that has ground almonds in but has predominant taste of lemon.

What's your recipe?

Um, I don't think so but I'm not anti-almond so I'n not sure that I would really notice though. Almond makes the cake nice and moist.
Is there a lot of almond in the recipe or just a few ounces?

It's in the baking supplement of this month's Olive magazine - pistachio and orange blossom cake. There's 70g flour and 70g of ground almonds (among other things!) What do you reckon?

that is quite a lot of almonds, does it have pistachio in it too? and orange - is it grated rind?

orange is quite a strong flavour, so if you can up the qty on that i think you'd be fine

it sounds lovely

I have an orange cake recipe that requires flour, ground almond and semolina. When I don't have almond or semolina I just substitute it with flour by weight. Cake always turned out nice.

It has 100g of pistachio as well, and the zest of an orange and a couple of teaspoons of orange flower water. Then there's a syrup with orange juice, zest and more orange flower water, and finally a mascarpone topping with orange zest and more orange flower water!

It looks like it has the texture of carrot cake. I may replace the ground almonds with flour, just in case...

i would stick to the almonds, A-P it looks like it's there for texture

it won't taste anything like almond 'flavouring'

and can i come round for a slice?

i'll bring the fizz

Could you use semolina or ground rice instead, maybe up the flour and use reduced weight of semolina

Beaker, I will use ground almonds on your say-so, but if I get even the faintest whiff of almonds, I will put the cake in an envelope and send it to you crumb by crumb!

If, on the other hand, it is almond-free, you are welcome to bring the fizz and share the cake!

Why not use ground hazelnuts?

I have the same intense dislike of marzipan, amaretto etc. I can't even eat a cake that has been covered in marzipan once marzipan is taken off. I regularly use ground almonds in cakes - they don't taste like almond flavour things at all and they give a lovely texture.

I have a recipe book from the eighties (when ground almonds were more expensive and harder to come by , presumably) that suggests substituting semolina for ground almonds in cakes.

Thanks - I didn't make the cake in the end because the bottle I thought was orange water was actually rose water (barf). I've no idea why I ever bought a bottle of rose water!

nnoooooooo!!!!!!!!

you can make beautiful 'smelly' icing now though

DS was allergic to almonds and I have used semalina instead and it works quite well.