Angel Food Cake

I am so happy to have comments working! It changes everything! I feel like a kid at Christmas when I sit down to the keyboard.

Once upon a time, when I was a little girl

there where days when the word was put out that if the children were in the house there could be no running, no shouting, no jumping, no slamming the doors. There were times when we were older and signs were posted around the house: NO Running, NO Jumping, NO door slamming. Baking an Angel Food Cake took over the entire kitchen and the entire house. There were severe consequences for ignoring those rules. Those were the times when Daddy was baking Angel Food Cakes. Since Angel Food Cakes were a favorite of my mother’s and all of the three kids in the house, this occurred with some frequency. It was all the big deal made about being quiet and not allowing any disturbance that created, at least in my mind, the mystic and even danger that surrounded the baking of an Angel Food Cake. By the time I was grown and had a kitchen of my own, baking an Angel Food Cake had taken on mystical proportions.

Growing up, mother was happy to have me help her, she was happy to let me bake cookies and even a dinner where I made up a menu and the family ordered from it. Everybody ordered what I’d cooked that night except father who asked for everything I’d been silly enough to put on it before he asked for the Beef Stroganoff! But, I never spent a great deal of time cooking.

Once on my own, I decided that I needed to learn something more than chocolate chip cookies and beef stroganoff. Then I decided that if I could read then I could jolly well cook. And so I cooked and I did pretty well. Then one day, Angel Food Cake came up. Angel Food Cake gave me pause. As the mother of two little boys, I felt they should know the mystic of the process and the joy of the light, soft and heavenly sweetness of a bite of Angel Food Cake.

I decided to make a leap of faith and have a try at baking one. I remembered my dad telling a story about a friend who tried repeatedly to bake Angel Food Cakes and never could get them to rise. He’d talk her through it over and over, until one day he discovered she was greasing the pan. He told her: That’s like putting Crisco on a glass pole and then trying to climb it. You’ll have about the same success greasing an Angel Food Cake pan. Father always stressed this was one thing (popover preparations were second only to Angel Food Cake) that required absolute accuracy. In other words, this is rocket science. Once I’d done a couple of these, the process did lose some of it’s mystic for me. For instance, I’ve found you can cut the powdered sugar from 1.5 c to 1 c; I don’t think anybody will notice. I don’t normally measure the egg whites to 1.5 cups, I use 14 large eggs. And, yes, I do use half whole wheat pastry flour in place of half the unbleached. If you really want a pure white cake, you’ll need to use clear vanilla and all white all purpose flour. At the same time, I will guarantee that if you open the oven door, the earlier the more effect, the cake will not rise as much as it would have. And if you are unfortunate enough to let that oven door slam, you will end up with a very flat cake indeed. The cream of tartar is a very small insurance policy and may save you less height if you make small mistakes. I’ve often forgotten it or been out of it and never missed it.

I’m always a believer that Variety is the Spice of Life and often change things that work well just to see what will happen. Gorn thinks that’s nuts. Still I persist. My great success with Angel Food Cake came when I baked 6 of these for Jason’s office. The original as in the recipe was great. The crunched peppermint candy was wonderful. The lemon was just good. I do tend to be experimental.

After fruit, this is probably as healthy as you can get with a sweet dessert.

1/2 c all purpose flour 1/2 c whole wheat pastry flour

1.5 c powdered sugar 1 c sugar

1.5 c egg whites 1/4 t salt

1.5 t cream of tartar 1.5 t vanilla

1/2 t almond extract

Pre-heat the oven to 375°.

The all purpose flour, I sift. The whole wheat pastry, I fluff with a spoon and make sure there are no out right lumps.

Whip the egg whites until foamy and add the cream of tarter and salt. Add the granulated sugar gradually until stiff peaks form but not so much that they become dry. Add the vanilla and almond extracts gently with two gentle stirs.

Adding a 1/4 c of flour at a time, fold into the egg whites. Do not be concerned about some small lumps. Do not over mix.

Bake 375° for 30 to 35 minutes. My convection oven has finished this cake in 30 minutes normally.

As Sue & Baking Soda point out in the comments, when the cake is removed from the oven it is turned upside down to cool to maintain the height it reached in the oven.

If there are angels, this is what they must eat for dessert. It is very likely to put a look of ecstasy on your face much as you saw on Sue’s face in yesterday’s post.

This cake in my opinion doesn’t need anything else but I do often serve fresh fruit with it. It was delicious with the rhubarb raspberry sauce from yesterday’s post. There are no pictures: the wine was good and nobody would wait.

Today, I still follow some of the ritual when I mix this cake. I double wash the bowl I’m going to whip the egg whites in; there must be no greasy residue left behind. I double wash my hands when I separate the whites and the yolks; there must be no greasy residue on my fingers when I handle those whites. I never open the oven door during the first 30 minutes of baking.

When the house smells of Angel Food Cake baking, I hear: NO Running, NO Jumping, NO door slamming and I smile.