Home › Cakes › Angel Cake (Whites of nine large eggs)
Angel Cake (Whites of nine large eggs)
Whites of nine large eggs, a heaping cup sugar, a cup flour, sifted five times, one teaspoonful of baking powder, a dash of salt, one-half teaspoonful each of lemon and vanilla extract. Separate the eggs, add salt and baking powder to the whites and beat till stiff; add sugar and flavoring, beat thoroughly, then carefully turn in the flour. Bake in a moderate oven fifty minutes.
A plain turn-of-the-century angel cake, distinguished mainly by its use of baking powder — most later versions rely on cream of tartar and the whites alone. A few unstated assumptions are worth filling in.
- The hinge: fold, do not stirThe flour goes in last, in several additions, cut through the meringue with a spatula until barely combined. Any beating at this stage collapses the foam and gives a dense, rubbery layer at the base.
- "A moderate oven"350F. Angel cakes are often baked a little cooler, 325F, which gives a more even rise; at 350F start checking at 40 minutes rather than waiting the full fifty.
- The pan is unstatedThis wants an ungreased tube pan, and with only nine whites a smaller one than the standard 10-inch may suit better. The batter climbs the sides as it sets, and a greased pan gives it nothing to hold. Do not substitute a nonstick or silicone pan.
- CoolingInvert the pan immediately on its feet or over a bottle neck and leave it until stone cold. A hot angel cake left upright sinks under its own weight.
- Flour "sifted five times"The repeated sifting is largely doing the work of modern cake flour, aerating and lightening a coarser household flour. Use 1 cup cake flour, sifted once or twice, and you are in much the same place.
- A heaping cup of sugarRead that as about 1 1/4 cups, roughly 250 g. Superfine dissolves into the whites faster than granulated and reduces the risk of a weeping meringue.
- Baking powder and the whitesAdding baking powder directly to the whites before beating is period practice; a modern baker would use 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar instead, which stabilises the foam rather than inflating it. Either works, but do not use both at full strength.
- The yolksNine yolks are left over. They keep two days covered in the refrigerator and are the natural start of a custard, curd or rich shortbread.
- YieldOne tube cake, about twelve slices. Cut with a serrated knife in a sawing motion -- pressure compresses the crumb.
Angel cake, or angel food cake, appears in American cookbooks from the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and is usually linked to two things becoming common in ordinary kitchens: cheap white sugar finely ground enough to dissolve in egg white, and the rotary egg beater, which cut the labour of raising a stiff meringue by hand. Its name is generally traced to its whiteness and lightness, in contrast to the dark, butter-heavy "devil's food" that followed it into print. A cake with no butter and no yolks was cheap in fat but extravagant in eggs.