What We Cook: Angel Food Cake

Our Cookbook Blog

Our Cookbook ~ What We Cook, is a compilation of every recipe we (Janice and Carissa) cook - recipes from our cookbook collections, our recipe boxes, and our heads! We set up this blog for friends and family who have our cookbook to let them see pictures we post of the recipes in the book, and also for us to note any corrections, revisions, or additions to What We Cook. We encourage people who are cooking our recipes to let us know how the recipes turn out and any suggestions they might want to make.

In addition, we will be sharing some of our new recipes (along with pictures) that are not in our cookbook. We hope you will help us out and test recipes and give us your comments.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Angel Food Cake

This is my favorite cake to make in the spring and summer. It just goes with the season. I was never a big angel food cake fan until I began making it from scratch a few years ago. You will be surprised at how much better this cake is than the ones from the supermarket or from a mix.

If you have been following the blog, you know I have been on a roll making vanilla cream custard lately (which requires 4 egg yolks)...and that after a few banana puddings with that custard, comes angel food cake!

I saved the egg whites from 3 batches of custard till I had a total of 12 egg whites. I just added the whites to the container in the freezer. Then when I had time to make cake, I thawed them in the fridge overnight. So here are my collected and thawed egg whites--all 12 of them. Now of course, you can just separate a dozen eggs and throw away the yolks if you want to. But I kind of find it a challenge to try to use both the yolks and the whites.

One of the tricks of this recipe, is processing the sugar until it is very fine. When you do this, a sugary powder will float out of the top of your food processor, so put a towel over it or you will have a sticky counter.

The egg white mixture beats up like magic.

It is important to sprinkle in the flour mixture and gently turn the beaten egg white mixture by hand.

Pile it all into your angel food cake pan with a removable bottom. Be sure to use a pan that comes apart; this cake will not work in a bunt pan.

As soon as the cake comes from the oven, turn it over on its little legs to keep the cake from "falling."

My cake had risen beyond its legs though, so when I saw it was touching the counter, I put it up on a vinegar bottle. I remember my grandmother used to do this on a Dr. Pepper bottle...

After hanging upside down for 3 hours to totally cool, it is time to remove from the pan. This is easy to do with a knife.

Perfect.

A lot of people like to put strawberries and whip cream on angel food cake...and I might do that with some leftovers in a couple days. But on the first day, when the crust is still a little bit crunchy, and the inside incredibly moist and light...I don't want anything to take away from the pure pleasure of eating angel food cake just like it is.