Monday, April 4, 2011

Angel Food Cake Conquered

I like to think that I'm an above average cook.  I like to eat good food so I like to cook good food, there are very few recipes that intimidate me and I'm not afraid of complicated ones.  There are however two foods that history has proven I can not cook, angel food cake and shortbread.  We'll talk about the cake today and the shortbead some other day.A few years ago I decided I wanted to make an angel food cake since I hadn't ever done it before.  I found a Brown Sugar Angel Food Cake recipe from Martha Stewart that looked delicious so I made it.  The process seemed just fine and I looked forward to the finished product only when I pulled it out of the oven it was super thin and dense.  I'm not used to cooking failures so it wasn't too long before I tried again with the very same result, a very thin, flat, dense cake.  Not what I was hoping for.  I can't remember if I tried a third time or not but I never succeeded so I got rid of my pan and resolved to buy them pre-made in the future.  That was at least 4 years ago and I've never made one since.Flash forward to last week when I made Creme Brulee with a friend, we made two batches so we ended up with 12 egg yolks (they were delicious by the way), that just happens to be the perfect amount for angel food cake so I figured I'd give it a go.I borrowed a pan from my Mom and used a regular recipe from my Betty Crocker cookbook and I won!  This cake was delicious.  It was slightly dense and I would have preferred a tad less almond extract but otherwise it was a success.
Despite my success I'll be returning the pan and I won't be making another any time soon, I'm still just as happy with store bought cakes but it's nice to know I overcame my failure.  
One day I'll work on the shortbread.

3 comments:

Tana said...

Angel Food Cake is my fav. I've never attempted to make one myself, but my friend's mom made the best Angel Food Cake in the world... and the frosting was some kind of awesome! I so need that reccipe...:)Anyways, congrats on the win.

Julie Lewis said...

We made angel food cake in Foods 10 and it was good but I've never been able to justify using that many eggs for one cake so I've made them from a box since then.

Jolayne said...

I've never tried angel food cake. My nemesis is white sauce. It works every time when I make salmon sauce, but I just can't get it work for mac and cheese or alfredo sauce!