Sunday, September 30, 2012

Angel Food Cake

So, tomorrow is Thomas' 25th birthday and we were going to take Monday off and celebrate with a day just for the two of us--however, I was sick almost all last week and am dreadfully behind at work, so we decided we were going to celebrate today.  My soon to be sister-in-law posted something about recipes for Angel Food Cake on Facebook and my stomach immediately gurgled.  And with Thomas' approval I undertook the challenge to make my first ever home made cake...and you know I just could not leave the recipe alone...but it made it easier and less messy!

I actually took some from both of the following recipes as well as adding a bit of my own flair:
Alton Brown's recipe
One of the endless variations on allrecipes.com

Ingredients:

  • 1 3/4 cup powdered sugar (because I was not going to make a sugar syrup or grind sugar to make more cleanup for myself!)
  • 1 cup all purpose flour
  • 6 eggs (separated)
  • 1/3 cup warm water
  • 1 tspn extract (I used orange, but I think vanilla or almond would be delicious as well)
  • 1 tspn cream of tartar
Directions:
  • Preheat oven to 350F
  • Separate your egg whites and egg yolks into separate bowls--make sure you do NOT get any yolk into your whites or the fat will keep the protein from stiffening (science!).
    • Tip: separate each egg singly into a cup, then dump the white into the bowl you will use, so that if you mess up and get yolk in one egg you will not have to start over or waste all the previous eggs that you have so perfectly separated!
  • Use hand mixer to beat egg whites until you get medium stiff peaks
  • Add extract, cream of tartar, and water to egg whites and begin beating with hand mixer
  • Slowly sift in half of the powdered sugar while beating and beat until you get stiff peaks (stiff peaks means that the whipped stuff stays in place, even if you tilt the bowl, and is no longer liquid)
  • Beat egg yolks in separate bowl until lemon colored (I did not even know this was a thing until today, but the yolks change color when beaten)
  • Slowly add yolks to whites and fold in with a spatula
  • Combine flour with leftover sugar and mix together
  • Slowly add flour and sugar mixture into "batter" and fold in (mine did not look like a typical cake batter)
  • Pour into ungreased tube pan and bake for 1hr, or until visible cake is golden brown and a little cracked and a toothpick inserted comes out clean (wait until after 35 minutes to check if done, insert toothpick halfway between inner and outer wall--mine only took 50 minutes to be entirely done.)
    • Make sure not to grease your pan or you will not be able to easily cool your cake without it falling out!)
  • Cool upside down for at least an hour before removing cake.  (I have an angel food cake pan with three little feet that stick up and lift the pan off the surface it is resting on, which makes cooling it upside down quite easy--$12 at Walmart.  Don't have an awesome pan?  You can balance the inner circle of your tube pan on top of a bottle.  Don't have a tube pan?  I think you could turn a square pan upside down on a wire rack or a plate and let it cool).
  • To remove the cake turn it right side up, use a knife to draw around the edges of the cake to loosen it from the pan and then invert pan onto a plate!
Enjoy however you like your angel food cake.  I like mine with fresh, sliced strawberries (lots of people like it with whipped cream, but I'm not a fan).  Thomas seems to think strawberry ice cream will go well on his, we will see.   
Thomas took a chunk out of it before I could even get a picture...

Piece with desert!
Sorry there were not more pictures of the process, but I was not planning on blogging about it until after most of the steps were already done and I just got excited about the fact that I had finished mixing together my first cake from scratch!  Also, this was absolutely delicious!

What About You?  How do you like to eat your angel food cake?  Have you ever made a cake from scratch before and how did it turn out?