Angel food cake comes with its formula (a dozen of egg whites, superfine sugar, and cake flour) with leavening only coming from the air whipped into the egg whites and batter and a little help from the cream of tartar to help stabilize the egg whites. But just because it’s the classic way to do it, doesn’t mean we don’t think most angel food cakes need a little extra creativity to keep them from becoming spongy, forgettable large donut rings. You can swap out some of the flour for cocoa powder, you can add loads of lemon, rendering something that is impossibly flavorful and delicious, like Ina Garten does for her Lemon Angel Food Cake, or you can do as Betty Crocker does, and apply smart cake-baking techniques and resourcefulness to improve the predictable.
What drew us to this version from Betty Crocker’s Picture Cookbook that we’d bookmarked recently was the tweaks they’d made to the classic, or “key” recipe: a little bit of lemon and vanilla and the real stroke of insight, add in four egg yolks into half the batter, so that they add richly tender golden layers that classic angel-food cakes lack. (What’s good for crème brûlée is even better for angel food.) Oh, and the fact that they flavor it not only with vanilla extract and fresh lemon juice, but some egg yolks. We had to find out.
As should go without saying, Betty Crocker really knows how to bake. This is a great riff on the classic angel food, one of the “fluffy angels of all colors” as she described, and for us, it could not be more timely. Angel food cakes are ideal summer food: they soak up berry compotes and fruit glazes, they make excellent rafts for vanilla pudding, and even better beds for Irish-cream spiked whipped cream. Fact is, with a few fresh berries and one of these lightly wrapped in your refrigerator or freezer, you’ll always be able to throw together dessert quickly.
images from Flickr
Gold and Silver Angel Food Cake
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| Cook: | Yield: 1 cake | Total: |
The brilliance of this angel cake is all of things that are usually done to make it light as air and fluffy as a cloud: the repeated sifting, the whipped egg whites, and a little extra help from cream of tartar. Oh, and the eggy yolk layer addition? Wonderful. Imagine pockets of golden, creamy cake in a white, spongy cake. You've got to try it.
You'll Need...
- 2 cups sifted superfine sugar (confectioners), divided
- 1 1/3 cups cake flour
- 1 1/2 cups egg whites (12 eggs), room temperature
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar
- 4 egg yolks
- 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest (1 lemon)
- 3/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Set out but do not grease a 10-inch tube pan. (You don't want to grease it or it will stop the cake from rising.)
- In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, 1/2 cup sugar, and salt three times. (yes, three times...the extra effort will make an even and light crumb). Set aside.
- In a large bowl, whip with an electric mixer the egg whites until they become foamy, about 1 minute. Then, add the cream of tartar.
- Increase speed to high and continue to whip the eggs until they make soft peaks. Gradually whip the remaining 1 1/2 cups of sugar, sprinkling 3 tablespoons at a time over meringue. Beat 3 to 4 minutes until egg whites are soft and cloud-like, not overly dry. The meringue should hold stiff, shiny straight peaks when the whip is pulled up.
- With a rubber spatula, fold 1/4 of the flour-sugar mixture into the whites gently. Continue adding the flour by fourths until all is incorporated.
- Now comes the gold-silver effect. Divide batter into 2 parts. Into 1 part, fold 4 well beaten egg yolks and lemon zest. Fold vanilla into other part. Drop by spoonfuls into pan, alternating white and yellow batter. Cut around through batter with knife 5 to 6 times.
- 7. Pour batter into the ungreased tube pan and smooth the top. Bake until the top of the cake springs back to the touch and is golden brown and crackly, about 35 to 40 minutes.
- 8. Remove from the oven and immediately invert on a funnel. If the pan does not have "feet," set the pan over the neck of a heavy bottle, using the center hold to hold the cake. Let hang until cool. Run a knife or spatula down the sides of pan to help pull cake out.
Additional Notes
Tips on how to get your "angels" to take flight:
- Separate eggs while cold, because the yolks hold their shape better and separate more easily from the egg.
- Crack eggs one at a time into a small bowl, and then pour into a large measuring cup or bowl. This helps prevent a yolk from breaking as you're cracking it and ruining the whole batch of egg whites.
- Once cracked, let egg whites warm until room temperature, which helps them reach highest volume and whip faster. Drop yolks into a second bowl. Save 4 egg yolks for this recipe and store the remaining egg yolks for other desserts such as suggested below.
- Beat egg whites and add flour-sugar mixture immediately, because the eggs will deflate quickly. Similarly, bake immediately when the eggs are at their highest volume.
- Use an ungreased tube pan. Ungreased is important so the batter can climb up the edges. The tube pan has a hole in the middle so that the heat can cook the middle of the cake.
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