What makes angel food cake

Look in any low-fat cookbook, and you're bound to find at least one angel food cake recipe among the dieters' delights. Lemon juice was once used to keep the beaten egg whites stiff, but today cream of tartar is the stabilizer of choice. Other than that, the cakes combine little more than sugar, flour, and a pinch of salt with those loftily beaten whites.

Perhaps the most heavenly thing about angel food cake is how well it allows for riffs on the basic flavor. Vanilla is most common, but it's easily swapped out for citrus or other extracts.

You can replace some of the flour with unsweetened cocoa powder for a chocolate angel food cake , add ground cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves to make a spice cake, or incorporate finely crushed peppermint candies to take it in a holiday direction. The key thing is to keep the flavor additions minimal enough that you don't deflate the meringue as you fold them in.

Though the ingredients list is generally short, instructions for making a proper angel food cake can be anything but. The master recipe in " The Fannie Farmer Cookbook " by Marion Cunningham runs nearly six pages, though admittedly much of that concerns the various methods used for whipping and folding the egg whites.

For the best workout, you can use a traditional balloon whisk , but a modern electric mixer handheld or standing makes much lighter work. Interestingly, some food historians trace the widespread popularity of angel food cake to the advent of the rotary eggbeater in the mid- to late 19th century.

What was once an arduous task became much more homemaker-friendly, and recipes began to appear in earnest. A few pointers encourage success. Never grease your baking pan , or use anything nonstick-both inhibit a proper rise. Many recipes, including Martha's favorite recipes like the striking Pretty-in-Pink Angel Food Cake , require sifting the flour and some of the sugar together no fewer than four times before folding them into the meringue.

This will feel excessive, but it's crucial to achieving the cloud-like texture. Whip the whites to their optimum, not maximum, capacity. Properly whipped whites incorporate easily with the other ingredients and continue to expand in the oven.

The batter should be fluffy but fluid, pourable rather than spoonable. If you whip the whites too stiff, incorporating the dry ingredients will require extra folding, and the batter will lose volume. Also, the overextended air cells are more likely to collapse in the oven; the cake will be tough and chewy rather than melt-in-your-mouth tender. Whip the whites in a clean, deep bowl. Any equipment that comes in contact with the whites— the bowl, beaters or whisk attachment, and spatula— must be absolutely grease-free.

Wipe all your equipment with a paper towel dampened with a bit of white vinegar just to be sure. Plastic bowls are hard to keep grease-free, and glass bowls are slippery. The trick to folding is to gently combine the dry ingredients with the egg whites while retaining as much of the aerated volume as possible. Sprinkling the dry ingredients over the whipped whites, rather than dumping them on top, keeps the flour mixture from clumping and deflating the whites.

A few times during the process, bring the spatula up through the surface and check to make sure that the dry ingredients are being evenly distributed.

Because the flour mixture and the whites are the same color, it can be difficult to know when the folding is complete. Fold no more than is necessary to incorporate the dry ingredients into the egg whites. Once the cake is in the oven, the sugar interacts with the whites and with the flour proteins. Towards the end of the baking time, as the cake reaches its full height and turns golden, a few cracks may appear on the surface.

When the surface is golden and springs back when you touch it lightly, the cake is done. This article intrigues me and I can't wait to try it. I've never been told to underwhip the whites, pour the batter in, and bake at My angel food cakes have never come out as beautifully as yours, which tells me you're the expert I want to follow!

Did I miss the recipe, or do I just use the one I have and follow your tips? Already a subscriber? Log in. Get the print magazine, 25 years of back issues online, over 7, recipes, and more. Start your FREE trial. Fine Cooking. Sign Up Login. If you are seperating your own egg white, remember ANY yoke in the egg white will cause your cake to fall. Happy eating! Read More. Rating: 1 stars. I thought that this cake would have come out completely different.

I cooked it for one hour and it was a beautiful golden brown, but when i went to take it out of the pan besides it sticking to everything!

Taking the cake out of the pan was a completely different story. It looked like I let my son take it out of the pan with his hands! Reviews: Most Helpful. Carol Gedan.

Scroll down for some great tips on releasing the cake from the pan. I highly recommend parchment paper at the bottom of the tube pan. The whites slip right out and the yokes are kept in the funnel!

Just be sure to separate over a separate bowl so that if a yoke does slip through it won't spoil the whole bunch. Sarah girl. Fluffy and moist not at all like styrofoam that you get at the grocery. I made mine with half chocolate glaze and half with stawberrys and whipped cream. Both were delicious! Also use Pam non-stick spray when cooking to avoid the cake sticking to the pan.

This was good, I ate 3 pieces! My family really liked it too. The only thing I changed was that I didn't whip the egg whites to stiff peaks. When you make angel food, you're not supposed to whip them to very stiff peaks because that expands the walls of the bubbles to their full capacity, so then they won't rise anymore in the oven.

I whipped mine to a good thick foam, then added the cream of tartar, whipped them to soft peaks, added the extracts, then whipped just enough to incorporate them. Also, when you mix the flour mixture in, gently fold it in with a spatula, or else you'll pop the tiny bubbles and it will deflate.

I cooled my cake in the pan on the counter, no bottle or funnel, just balance I did use a tube pan with a removable bottom, I also highly recommend that. I served up the slices with macerated strawberry slices and sweetened whipped cream.

Don't be afraid to try this - it's SO good! I made it and a cake mix version for a family party to compare as a kind of "experiment" - the from scratch definitely won!