Homemade Angel Food Cake
Description
On Monday, Graham turned one, and the four of us celebrated the only way I know how, with an angel food cake, the cake my mother made for me and each of my siblings for nearly the first two decades of our lives. Angel food cake played such a role in celebrations growing up that for many years I assumed it was a Greek tradition — seriously, every aunt and great aunt and cousin seemed to celebrate with it, too.
Ingreadient :
- 1 cup sifted cake flour*
- 1 1/2 cups superfine granulated sugar (I did not use superfine)
- 1 1/4 cups egg whites (10 to 12), at room temperature
- 1 1/4 teaspoons cream of tartar
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
Direction :
- Preheat the oven to 325ºF.
- Sift the flour four times with a 1/2 cup of the sugar. (Do take the time to do this. I think it makes a difference. I don’t have a sifter — I just use a fine-mesh sieve.)
- Beat the egg whites until foamy. Add the cream of tartar and salt and beat until soft moist peaks form when the beater is withdrawn.
- Add the remaining sugar, about two tablespoons at a time, beating it in after each addition. Add vanilla and almond extract.
- Sift about one-quarter cup of the flour-sugar mixture at a time over the meringue and cut and fold it in just until no flour shows. (This part is kind of tricky. You’ll feel you are deflating the egg whites at every fold, but try to be delicate and fold no more than necessary.)
- Turn into ungreased nine- or ten-inch tube pan and bake about 45 minutes to an hour, until the cake is lightly browned and springy. Invert pan onto a rack and let cake cool in pan completely, about an hour and a half. Run a knife or metal spatula around the sides of pan to release the cake.
