I'd definitely agree about using ground almonds rather than coconut flour - not necessarily because of the taste, but because coconut flour absorbs a lot of liquid, and I actually found it virtually impossible to get the consistency right. I've discovered recently though that adding more liquid to a very stiff mix apparently
isn't the right thing to do!

I make muffins rather than cakes, and use ground almonds, ground hazelnuts which are good in chocolate muffins, and ground pecans which mix nicely with the ground almonds in carrot cake muffins. Sesame flour which had a nice fine texture closer to coconut flour, is best for savoury stuff, and you can add milled flaxseed and other various seeds to this.
For sweetening, Xylitol is generally recommended for baking, but avoid it if you keep dogs as it extremely toxic for them. I mainly use Sukrin Gold, which is a demerera style erythritol/stevia mix instead.
And deinitely look at our Ewelina's
Diabetic Good Baking blog, as her recipes will use our UK units.
Robbity