{Recipe} Angel Food Cake

Or as geometry enthusiasts might like to call it: "Angle Food Cake."

If you've ever made an Angel Food Cake from scratch, then you know there is going to be a lot of ONE THING in this post:

EGGS.

Well, not the entire egg. Just the egg whites. 13 of them. A baker's dozen. An egg extravaganza. An ode to the incredible, edible egg. A metric crapton of eggs.

Have I emphasized the amount of EGGS enough? Okay, good.

THAT IS SO MANY EGG WHITES, JUST SO YOU KNOW.

As for these babies:

They got cooked up and fed to one very happy, non-people-food-having doggy named Lucy. (Seriously. The extent of people food we give to her are non-seasoned meat fats and eggs. Everything else she eats is dog food.)

I'm a big proponent of not wasting food, and having a dog helps with that. 

Anyway, separating the eggs is only the tip of the iceberg known as Angel Food Cake. It's easier than a souffle but tougher than following the directions on a Betty Crocker box, so dig in deep.

Recipe:

1 cup cake flour
1 2/3 cups sugar
1 3/4 cups egg whites (roughly 13 large eggs)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

You also need a tube pan, the ones specifically made for Angel Food Cakes and Chiffon cakes. The ones with the removable bottoms are best.

First, you separate your eggs. As the recipe says, it takes about 13 eggs to generate 1 3/4 cups of egg whites. 

Then you add those babies to your stand mixer (with your whisk attachment) or whatever bowl you use when you use a handheld mixer and then go to town:

That's a very ~artistic picture.

After about a minute of beating them on medium speed, they look frothy like the picture above. 

Then you add your cream of tartar and start beating them again. 

If you're me, you stand there in awe as SCIENCE takes place before your very eyes! The eggs turn from a slimy gooey mess to this wonderful light, foamy goodness.

If you're everyone else, you start preparing your dry ingredients while your stand mixer is whirring.

Cake flour gives cakes a more crumbly texture. The only one my supermarket has is in a box, and pouring flour out of a box is a messy business. It took one disastrous attempt before I threw up my arms and dumped it all into a plastic container.

I'm not sold on cake flour. I only use it because recipes call for it and are really condescending about its merits over all-purpose flour. And with something light like an Angel Food cake, I was not going to cut corners and use sub-standard all purpose flour (like I'm a PEASANT or something) but I think one day I'm gonna re-make this cake with that lower-class flour just to see how it turns out.

ANYWAY! This recipe stresses sifting the flour three times. The best way to do that is to lay out two sheets of wax/parchment paper, sift it onto one, then use that paper to pour it back into the sifter over the other piece. Back and forth, back and forth. Then sift it one more time with 2/3 cup of the sugar.

The rest of the sugar goes into a bowl because...

Once the egg whites are HUGE and forming soft peaks, add in the 1 cup of sugar two tablespoons at a time.

Then add your vanilla extract and beat until whites form soft peaks again.

Then carefully sift in 1/4th of your flour mixture over the whites, then fold them in gently. Once they are thoroughly incorporated, sift in the rest of the flour mixture and fold it in completely.

This is not as agonizing as folding in the flour for the souffle was. 

Then add it to your tube pan: 

Rap it twice on the counter to burst air bubbles.

The first time I attempted this, I didn't realize that my mother-in-law's tube pan was missing its bottom. So I improvised with a large cake pan underneath, but I didn't have high hopes. I remembered reading a while ago that Angel Food cakes need to be baked in tube cans because the tube in the middle helps to evenly distribute the heat. That first cake came out tough and dense, still tasty, but wrong in texture and size.

I had Mr. Cheddar dig out my still-unused tube pan from our storage for the second time, and things turned out a lot better.

Bake at 300° for an hour and fifteen minutes, or until a toothpick that is inserted in the middle comes out clean.

JUST when you think you're done, that you're about to dig into some delicious Angel Food cake, you realize you've still got work to do.

Invert the cake pan on the counter (I did mine on the stove) and let it cool for two hours. If your tube pan does not have those nifty little legs, then invert it on a glass bottle. Either way, you want that baby upside-down. 

After two hours (during which I watched the three-part Community finale extravaganza, which ran the spectrum of emotions and hilarity) is the fun part: Cutting it out of the pan. Run a butter knife or skewer gently along the sides and the middle tube. Then lift it out by the removable bottom and leave it inverted on a plate. Mine was still sticky so I cut it off the bottom, too. It gave it an awesome pattern:

Then (and this is important) be prepared for people attacking you for THEIR lack of self-control. "I hate you for making this cake, normally I can eat one piece of cake and be fine, but I've already had three pieces of this one!" or "This cake is too light, it makes it too easy to eat the whole thing!"

Yeah, it goes with the territory of making an Angel Food cake.

You have the option to make a sugary glaze or garnish it with fresh fruit. I did not do such frilly things since the cake was gone by the next afternoon. 

Mission: Deliciously accomplished.

Tomorrow, I will be sharing a non-dessert food post!