Angel Cake
whites of 8 eggs 1 teaspoon cream of tartar 3/4 cup granulated sugar 1 teaspoon Royal Baking Powder 3/4 cup flour 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon vanilla extract Whip whites of eggs to firm, stiff froth; add cream of tartar; fold sugar in lightly; fold in flour which has been sifted three or four times with baking powder and salt; add vanilla. Pour into ungreased pan and bake 45 to 50 minutes in moderate oven. Remove from oven; invert pan and allow to stand until cold. Ice with either chocolate or white icing.
A lean, small-format angel cake from a baking powder company's promotional book. Two things need attention before you start: the pan and the fact that the whites are whipped stiff before anything else goes in.
- Oven temperature"Moderate oven" here is usually taken as 350F. Some cooks prefer 325F for angel cake so the top does not set and crack before the interior rises; if you bake at 350F, start checking for a dry, springy top before the full 50 minutes.
- The panThe recipe specifies only an ungreased pan; an ungreased tube pan, ideally one with feet, is the usual choice, sized to the quantity of batter. Ungreased is not an oversight -- the batter must grip the sides to climb, and grease makes it slump. Avoid a nonstick or silicone pan for this.
- Cooling upside downInverting the pan the moment it leaves the oven is the instruction that decides whether the cake survives. The crumb is still soft and will compress under its own weight if left upright. Balance the pan on its feet or over the neck of a bottle and leave it until completely cold, an hour or more.
- Cream of tartar timingThe original adds it after the whites are already stiff. Modern practice is to beat it in when the whites are foamy, before the sugar, because it stabilises the foam as it builds rather than after. Folding it into an already stiff meringue risks knocking the air out.
- Egg whitesEight whites from modern large eggs come to roughly 1 cup or 240 ml. Measure rather than count if your eggs are small. Whites separate most cleanly cold and whip highest at room temperature.
- FlourUse cake flour if you have it; household flour of the period was often softer than today's all-purpose, though this varied by region and mill. Sifting three or four times is not fussiness -- it helps fold a dry powder into meringue without lumps or deflation.
- The baking powderA true angel cake needs no chemical leavening; the whites do all the work. The teaspoon here is the book selling its product. Leaving it out will not ruin the cake.
- Yield and servingAbout 10 to 12 slices. Cut with a serrated knife or pull apart with two forks -- a straight blade compresses the crumb. The icing is optional; a plain angel cake with fruit is closer to how it is usually eaten now.
Angel cake, or angel food cake, appears in American cookbooks from the 1870s onward and its rise is generally traced to two things: the arrival of cheap refined white sugar and fine white flour, and the spread of the rotary egg beater, which made whipping eight whites to a stiff froth a matter of minutes rather than a long arm-aching job with a whisk. The name is usually said to refer to the pale, almost weightless crumb, set against the dense butter-and-yolk "gold cake" that often used up the leftover yolks. Its presence in a Royal Baking Powder booklet is instructive: the company's business was persuading households that every cake benefited from its product, so a teaspoon has been worked into a recipe that by definition does not need one.