Here’s my angel food cake….yes completely and TOTALLY from scratch!
I am SO excited! Â Making an angel food cake from scratch has been something I wanted to figure out for YEARS….yes YEARS.
We have had chickens now for about 7 years. Â I had wanted them since we moved to the farm but there was no building for them to be housed in. Â Then one day, hubby came home with a small building…yes a small building. Â It was the GREATEST surprise and we have had chickens even since. Â Spring through fall we get about 15 eggs a day. Â We give a lot of eggs away and we eat an awful lot too. Â I am continually looking for recipes that use a lot of eggs. Â Check the recipe section for egg recipes.
I have tried angel food cake a few times and it just didn’t turn out.  I tried it again and Wa-La….it turn out.  Here was my trick.  I went to www.youtube.com….yes, youtube.  I typed in making an angel food cake and watched the videos.  I realized that I wasn’t beating my eggs long enough and I wasn’t using eggs that were room temperature.  Just those two changes and a GREAT recipe from my Amish cookbook and we had angel food cake.  Daughter, Kalissa is really happy as angel food is her favorite….hubby not so happy as he is worried his favorite chocolate cake will move down the baking  totem pole.
Here’s the recipe….
2 c egg whites
2 t cream of tarter
1 t vanilla
1 1/2 c sugar
1 1/2 c CAKE flour
1 c sugar
Beat the first 4 ingredients adding the 1 1/2 c sugar (gradually over 5-10 minutes) keep beating until stiff. Â Sift the CAKE flour and the 1 c sugar together three times. Gradually adding it to the mixture and folding it in between additions. Â Put the cake batter in an ungreased tube pan, bake at 350 for 1 hour.
I HIGHLY suggest watching the a video, I am a VERY visual person and it helped me tremendously.   My recipe shows variations to make a lemon, maple nut, cherry nut, and chocolate.  I am going to be trying these and will let you know more about them as I do…..now, I am determined to figure out meringue on pies….if I can do angel food, I think I can figure out meringue.  I wonder if youtube has a video on that…..?
Check out more sweets at Sweet as Sugar Cookies.
Oh how I love Angel Food Cake! Now I think I must make one. :)
I have never seen a square pan like this and now I will be on the look out for one of those. ;)
What do you do with all the yolks?
I’ve heard of chocolate angel food cake. Perhaps that could be next and both your daughter and husband would have a great cake to share. Can’t say that I’ve ever seen a square tube pan. Cool.
When we had layers (chickens), I would make Angel Food from scratch and it tastes so much better than a mix or store bought. I also made a chiffon cake that used both the egg white and yolks, but the Angel Food was my favorite. I have a square pan too.
I’m glad I’m not alone in my quest for really good angel food cake from scratch. And I love your square pan…gotta get one of those!
One thing I always make sure when making an angel food cake–be sure to use eggs that are at least a week old. don’t know why–but it works…also having them at room temperature is important. I always make 3 cakes at a time as I make such a mess.
I love making angel food cakes! I make several a week! My favorite is a Chocolate Angel Food! They are just as simple and oh so yummy! Here is the link http://fromcupboardtocupboard.blogspot.com/2010/05/chocolate-angel-food-cake.html
Oh! And I must buy a square pan! I have 5 round ones and they’re just not that cool looking :)
Happy Cooking!
Teauna
You have made SO many people happy with this recipe! I actually have one person buying them because sharing them at the office wasn’t enough for him. You also possibly saved ME years of figuring out how to make the perfect angel food cake.
As for what to do with the yolks, I’ve added a link to a cake recipe that I made last night. It uses 12 egg yolks & no egg whites, but does rise surprisingly high while baking and would be very good with a sweetened fruit & whipped cream topping. It’s not as good as the angel food, but it’ll be eaten quickly enough.
The link didn’t seem to work. http://app.cookeatshare.com/recipes/marian-s-daffodil-cake-chiffon-549250#CES
It’s a chiffon cake recipe.
On second thought… I was really busy this morning and SHOULD HAVE read the recipe through a couple of times as usual. Forgive the stupid remark please! As it turned out. Whipping the egg whites with all of the 11/2 c of sugar didn’t hurt anything at all. I was sifting the flour/sugar and noticed that the egg whites had become more volumous than usual!? By the time I was ready to add the flour/sugar, I was compelled to fold it all in gradually by hand in a larger bowl as it wouldn’t even fit in the MixMaster bowl together and still leave room for folding. It’s baking now, I’ll post another comment when it’s done.
In 1979, before graduating, that winter I decided that my cooking skills had improved to attempt said pinnacle. Angel food cake from scratch. My father had been taught how to bake and cook on a WOOD STOVE and claimed to have been able to produce a perfect angel food cake. I had an old cookbook my mother had inherited from 1932, with a recipe. Our local grocery store was provided by an old farmer once a week with six dozen eggs from his hens (other than the regular eggs). I made bread from scratch and beat it by hand, and got my arm in shape. I reserved the farmer’s entire delivery one week. Medium eggs. My recipe called for six dozen. The day, I went and picked up my eggs, assembled my stuff, and went for it. It ended up perfectly pinpoint bubbles, only thing it was about an inch under the rim and didn’t overflow. I found out later the eggs were not at room temperature. Everything else worked though, and I made real whipped cream with my ol’ arm for topping it. Your recipe and 14 dozen eggs sitting here make me want to do it again. My dad is no longer with us but he said other than the height, even though, it was very good. (examining my bicep right now). Thank you again, I think I’ll try a ‘memory’ cake… as that recipe disappeared a long time go.
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