Angel Cake
11 egg whites 1 1/2 cups sugar 1 cup Gold Medal flour 1 teaspoon cream of tartar 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon vanilla Beat whites of eggs until frothy, add cream of tartar and continue beating till eggs are stiff. Then sift in the sugar gradually, fold in the flour mixed with salt and sifted four times. Add the flavoring. Bake forty-five to fifty minutes in angel cake pan. Never try to take out, but stand upside down till it drops of itself.
A classic tube-pan angel food, written for cooks who knew from habit what the book leaves out — chiefly the oven temperature and the fact that the pan must never be greased.
- The hinge: an ungreased panAn angel cake climbs by gripping the sides of the pan, so the tube pan must be bare metal — no butter, no flour, no non-stick coating, no paper liner. This is also why the recipe says never to turn it out while warm: inverted cooling keeps the still-soft crumb stretched until it sets, and it will release on its own or with a thin knife run around the edge once cold.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives none. Angel cakes of this size bake at around 325-350F; the recipe's own timing is forty-five to fifty minutes. It is done when the top springs back and a skewer comes out clean, not merely when the time is up.
- Egg whitesEleven whites is roughly 1 1/3 cups, about 11 oz / 320 g, taking a modern large white at about 1 oz. Whites separate most cleanly cold but whip to greater volume at room temperature -- separate straight from the fridge, then let them stand half an hour.
- "Frothy" then stiffCream of tartar goes in at the froth stage, before structure has formed, which is what stabilises the foam. Beat to soft-to-firm peaks that still slump slightly at the tip, not to the dry, grainy stage — over-beaten whites break when the flour is folded in.
- The flourGold Medal was a hard-wheat flour from the Minneapolis mills, and the recipe's four siftings aerate it and keep it light. Cake flour, sifted twice, gives a tenderer crumb. Measure the cup by spooning and levelling, or weigh: about 4 oz / 115 g of all-purpose, 3 3/4 oz / 105 g of cake flour.
- SugarSuperfine (caster) dissolves faster into the whites and reduces the risk of a weeping meringue; sift it, as instructed, and add it in a slow stream with the beater still going.
- FoldingSift the flour and salt over the meringue in three or four additions and fold with a large spatula, cutting down through the centre and up the side. Stop the moment no dry streaks remain; every extra stroke costs volume.
- Yield and servingA standard 10-inch tube pan, 12 to 16 slices. Cut with a serrated knife using a sawing motion, or the crumb compresses. It keeps two or three days well wrapped at room temperature and does not take kindly to the refrigerator.
Angel cake — angel food, as it came to be known — spread through American cookbooks in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and was firmly established by the time flour millers began issuing promotional cook books like this one. Its rise is usually traced to two practical developments: cheap refined white sugar and, more importantly, the mechanical rotary egg beater, which made whipping a dozen whites to stiffness a matter of minutes rather than an arm-aching quarter hour with a bundle of birch twigs or a flat wire whisk. The recipe also solves a household problem, since a cake using eleven whites presumes eleven yolks waiting to be used in custard, gold cake or mayonnaise.