Angel Food Cake

I love to bake. I’m not the greatest cook in the world, but I’m a darn good baker, if I do say so myself.

Now that it looks like I’m going to have some time on my hands, I think maybe I’ll do some “Surviving the Wait” posts to share what I’m doing to keep myself occupied while we muddle through this long process. And what better way to do that than to dive into my Pinterest boards and start some projects!

If you’ve ever seen my Pinterest page, you’ll have seen that I have over 800 dessert pins. For many of them, I’m just waiting for the right opportunity to make them, but while some people pin things just to let them gather virtual dust on their Pinterest boards, I do try recipes I find.

A lot of times when I’m trying a new recipe, I’ll look at several different recipes and use bits and pieces from each one to create my own. Which is probably part of the reason why there are so many recipes on my Divine Desserts board. And is exactly what I did here with my lasagna, chicken pot pie, and macaroni and cheese recipes.

A while back, I came across a from scratch angel food cake recipe. We love angel food cake in our house so that was definitely something I was interested in trying!

If you’ve ever looked at an angel food cake recipe (or chiffon cake or meringue…), you’ve noticed that it takes 12 egg whites whipped into a fluffy cloud-like mixture to get that unique texture. Only the whites.

But what do you do with the yolks? That, my friends, is why I didn’t try the angel food cake recipe sooner. I couldn’t justify wasting all those egg yolks.

So recently I took to the internet to find out just what I could make with 12 yolks. There were quite a few recipes, of course, but I stuck with some that I’ve always wanted to try but was just a tiny bit nervous about. Those three recipes used a total of 11 yolks. I was ok with that.

In one evening, in much less time than I thought it would take, I made an angel food cake, chocolate pudding, lemon curd, and fettuccine alfredo.

And they were all delicious!!

And because I love you all, I’m going to share this delicious angel food cake recipe with you!

Angel Food Cake (recipe adapted from Chef In Training)

• 1 ½ cups + 2tbsp sugar
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 cup cake flour
• 12 egg whites, room temperature
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp almond extract
• 1 ½ tsp cream of tartar

In a medium bowl, combine cake flour, salt, and half of sugar. Sift together and set aside

Combine egg whites, extracts, and cream of tartar in the bowl of a stand mixer, and with the whisk attachment, mix until just combined. Gradually add remaining sugar and beat the egg white mixture until stiff peaks form.

Sprinkle a few spoonfuls of the flour mixture over the egg whites and fold it in gently. Repeat until all of the flour mixture is mixed in.

Pour into a 10” ungreased tube pan (definitely ungreased – the cake needs something to hold onto as it rises).

Bake for 35 to 45 minutes until golden brown. Err on the side of overbaked here. It’s better to be a little overdone than underdone.

Remove from the oven, and immediately invert onto a bottle, unless your tube pan has those nifty little feet on it, and let cool completely. If you skip this step, the cake will deflate so make sure you let it cool upside down!

When the cake is cool, turn it right side up, run a knife around the edges, and carefully remove from the pan.

Serve with whipped cream and strawberries. Or that lemon curd you’re going to make with the leftover yolks.

If you like the fun confetti angel food cake mixes, just add in some sprinkles while you’re folding in the flour mixture. Looks just like the box mix, and tastes just as good, if not better!

It looks like a lot of work, but it really was pretty simple. If you like angel food cake and you like to bake, you should definitely try to make it from scratch. If you like the convenience of a mix, stick with that. They’re both equally delicious!

What recipes have you tried that you loved? Or hated…?