Angel Food Cake! Popular with Angels AND Devils!
Angel food cake, what a name! I just imagine the Philadelphia Cream Cheese Angel snacking on it while taking a break from her cream cheese bagels. It’s a cake as light , fluffy and white as a cloud! This baby is made without any fat, which means it can be a bit tricky, but I have faith in you! First you make a meringue, then carefully fold in flour and sugar, then once baked you flip it upside down so it doesn’t collapse on itself while it cools! Fun!
Angel Food Cake!
Angel Food Cake
Yield: 1 x 10” Angel Food Cake Tube Pan (ideally with a removable bottom, but use what you got!)
Preheat your oven to 350*F
1 1/2 cups of Egg Whites, room temperature (I had a carton of pasteurized egg whites to use up, but you can also use fresh egg whites, which would be about 12 egg whites)
1 cup Sugar
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1 teaspoon lemon juice (or vinegar) or if you have it 1/2 teaspoon Cream of Tartar
3/4 cup plus 2 Tablespoons All Purpose Flour
2 Tablespoons Cornstarch
1 1/4 cup Icing Sugar
1 teaspoon Lemon Extract (you can use any flavour here, traditionally it’s almond extract, but vanilla or orange are yummy too!)
Using a sieve, sift together your flour, cornstarch and icing sugar 3 times! Yes, seems excessive but we want those dry ingredients to be light and fluffy! Then set this to the side.
In the bowl of a mixer place your egg whites (make sure the bowl and whisk attachment are super clean and there isn’t any oily residue or else your whites aren’t going to whip). Whip the egg whites with the whisk attachment on medium high speed until they are white, fluffy and starting to look thick.
Now add your lemon juice (or cream of tartar) and salt, and while the machine is whisking on a medium speed very slowly add your 1 cup of regular sugar, don’t dump it in all at once or else it will deflate your egg whites. Basically you want to add a spoonful or two and then once you can’t see it on top of the whites, add another few spoonfuls until it’s all gone.
Once all the sugar is in the whites turn it up to high speed and whisk until you get stiff peaks. You should be able to hold the bowl upside down and the mixture won’t fall out. This is a meringue! Meringue is one of my favourite words.
Remove the bowl from the mixer and add your lemon (or other flavour) extract, and now we are going to add in the flour/icing sugar mixture to the whites by carefully folding it in, in 3-4 additions.
Dump about 1/3 of your flour mixture on top of the meringue and using a rubber spatula,scoop the meringue from the base of the bowl on top of the flour mixture, then continue doing this until it is mostly mixed in, some flour bits will still be showing. Then continue this with the rest of the flour mixture until it has all been incorporated.
At this point your mixture should still be thick and fluffy looking.
Now scoop the batter into your angel food cake tube pan. DO NOT GREASE YOUR PAN! We want a nice, dry, greaseless pan because the batter is going to cling to the sides while it bakes making it nice and light!
Using a butter knife run it through the batter in the pan a few times to knock out any large air bubbles.
Pop your cake into the oven for about 40 minutes or until golden brown and dry looking on top. It should spring back if you touch it with your fingers.
Right when it comes out of the oven FLIP it upside down to cool! Most angel food cake pans have little feet, or a hole in the middle so you can rest it on something and not touch the top edge of the cake.
Once it is cooled, run a knife around the edges, then using the removable bottom from your pan your should be able to push it out and your lovely angel food cake is all ready to be eaten!
I love to eat my angel food cake with whipped cream and berries, but honestly it’s delicious just on it’s own, or if your feeling wild, take a slice, butter both sides, and fry it! Yes, it’s SO good!