Angel Food Cake

To celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day today, I made an angel food cake!  I'm off work today, and I've been wanting to make an angel food cake since I got an angel food cake pan for Christmas!  I actually bought the pan for myself since I realized I didn't have one, and then I also realized I've never made an angel food cake before!  So today was the day!

I downloaded the following recipe from food network.  I really liked that it came with a video on the website that showed Alton Brown actually making the cake.  It looked easy!  I can do this!

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/angel-food-cake-recipe/index.html

The craziest thing is that it takes a dozen egg whites!!!  The recipe calls for an entire dozen!  I actually used 15 egg whites because my eggs are small.  Luckily, I usually have 5 dozen or so eggs in my fridge at any given time.  I do love my hard-working chickens! 

The most important thing is to bring the egg whites to room temperature before baking begins!!  I've attempted to use cold egg whites before to make meringue - they don't get fluffy when they're cold, I guess.  My previous meringue was awful.  And the recipe called for fresh eggs.  My eggs were laid yesterday ~ guess that's fresh enough!

This time, my eggs whipped up higher than could fit in the mixing bowl!  Yeah!  My batter was fluffier than what was shown in the website video.   

For Christmas I also got a new mixer as my old one broke.  This was my first time using it.

My cake pan was pretty small - only 7 inches around. I thought it was cute because it was small. But then I wasn't sure for how long to bake the cake, as the pan was smaller than the one used in the recipe. I ended up baking my cakes for 23 minutes. I made 2 angel food cakes because they were so small. It's important to cool the cake upside down.

I used almond extract in my cakes. You can use any flavoring - the recipe called for orange extract, but said any flavor could be used. The cake turned out light and fluffy ~ just perfect. The cake itself didn't have much flavor, it was just light and airy and moist and good. I served the first one with warmed blueberries. The second one had mixed berries as a topping. Next time I'm going to use another extract other than almond and see how it tastes. There will definitely be a next time for this cake!

 

I loved this angel food cake - I give it 5 forks up!

Now you go give it a try and let me know how it turns out!