Angel Food Cake vs Angel Foodcake

I love Angel Food Cake. I didn't used to, but I've come to appreciate it. Especially with the lovely recipe I'm about to share. I bake for special occassions at work. Ok, I just bake and make up occassions, but whatever. We had an intern this past summer and he celebrated a birthday while being part of our team. We all went for lunch and I made a cake for his birthday. One of my co-workers and I spoke and I said I'd make angel food cake and she agreed to bring the strawberries. I mentioned my plan in front of the team and got nods of approval.

The cake arrived for said party, and a number of my teammates looked confused. Now, I should mention that I work with a diverse group, a number of which English is a second language. And well, I talk fast. So they all thought it was Angel Foodcake. I'm not sure what foodcake is, but they seemed surprised by what arrived. It seemed to be pleasantly surpised as all but one snarfed it down. He proclaimed it too sweet. A concept I truly don't understand.

This wonderful recipe is thanks to Eric Todd a wonderful pastry chef from Seattle. If I could find him, I'd link to him. I would even ask his permission to include this. But he seems to have disappeared. I love this recipe and I misplace it on a regular basis. My original goal was for just this type of recipes, ones I love but can't keep track of! And yes, I know I promised more lemon recipes, I'm getting there. Just with all the baking I've done this week that required egg yolks, I had more than a dozen egg whites calling out to be used!



I listed vanilla sugar for use in this recipe, but regular sugar is fine. Eric recommends super fine, but if you don't have any, just run your regular sugar through your food processor for a few seconds to get a finer grain. The invert the cake pan tip was from another local Seattle chef from another class. I have found that my cake never "shrinks" using this method. You will also note that this recipe calls for almond extract and I have a nut free house. If you're nut free, please substitute almond flavoring. The almond flavor really makes this cake in my opinion.

Angel Food Cake

1-1/2 c vanilla sugar divided
1 c cake flour
1-1/2 c egg whites
1-1/2 t cream of tartar
1/4 t salt
2 t almond extract
1 t vanilla

Preheat oven to 350.

Combine 1/2 c sugar with the cake flour. Set aside

In a heat-proof mixer bowl, combine 1 c sugar, egg whites, cream of tartar and salt over a bain marie or double boiler until warm. This increases the volumn and dissolves the sugar. I'm lazy, I just let them get to room temperature.

With whisk attachment beat the mixture until firm peaks form. Add the almond extract and vanilla. Fold in the flour/sugar mixture.

Pour into an ungreased (very important!!) tube pan. Angel food cake needs to attach to the sides of the pan to rise, so you don't want to grease it, or it can't.

Bake at 350 for 40 minutes. The cake will be golden brown in color and a cake tester will come out clean. Invert cake pan with a bottle through the middle hole or if the middle hole is higher on the sides on a plate.Inverting the cake will make sure it doesn't "sink" at all. Cool completely before removing from pan.