Conference turris::cooks

    For those of you that like angel food cake, I thought you might
    like the following receipe which I got out of Sunday's Boston
    Globe.  It has been too hot to bake, so I haven't tried it yet.
    Intend to, though.
    
    RESPBERRY ANGEL FOOD CAKE
    
    10 egg whites at room temp.
    1-1/4 teaspoons cream of tartar
    l/4 teaspoon salt
    1 teaspoon vanilla extract
    l/2 teaspoon almond extract
    l-l/4 cups sugar
    l cup cake flour
    1 cup fresh raspberries
    Raspberry Amaretto Sauce 
    
    1. Preheat oven to 325
    2. In a large bowl, beat egg white, cream of tartar and salt with
       an electric mixer until they form soft peaks.  Add vanilla and
       amond extracts and --gradually -- add the sugar, beating until
       stiff and shiny.
    3. Sift the flour onto the shiney egg whites and sprinkle 
       raspberries over the top.  Gently fold in the flour and 
       respberries with a rubber spatula.
    4. Place mixture in a 10 inch ungreased tube pan and bake for
       40 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
    5. Invert onto a cake rack.  Cool completely, then invert onto
       a platter.  Remove pan carefully (loosen around edges, if necessary)
       and serve with Raspberry Amaretto Sauce.
    
    RASPBERRY AMARETTO SAUCE
    
    2 cups raaspberries (fresh or frozen)
    l/2 cup confectioners sugar
    1 tablespoon lemon jice
    4 tablespoons amaretto liquer
    
    1. In a blender or food processor fitted with a stell blade, puree
       reaspberries.  Add sugar, lemon jice and amaretto and 
       continue to process until smooth.
    2. Strain to remove seeds.  Serve with Raspberry Angel Food Cake.
    
    TIPS
    
    For those of you who are tempted to leave out the salt, remember
    this.  Salt reacts with the other ingredients as a leavening agent.
    Without it, you will not get the cake to rise properly.
    
    For those who don't mind chlorestrol once in awhile.  The egg yolks
    can be used to make a custard sauce or custard, which is also 
    delicious.
    
    Enjoy.  SG 
    

    I made this cake, it was wonderful........but you need to GREASE the
    pan or you'll have a tough time removing the cake.
    
    Anne

    I believe that greasing the sides of the pan when making angel food
    cake will cause disaster -- the cake clings to the side of the pan
    in order to sustain the rising.
    
    Peigi

    re: -1 and grease/no grease
    
    My mom kept a special bowl and set of beaters soley for use in angel
    food cake!  She made a lot, as it is my brother's fave.
    
    She would set it upside down on a pop bottle to cool, then run a
    long, thin-bladed knife around the outside and inside, remove part
    of the pan, then run it around the bottom to loosen the second part
    of the pan.
    
    TW
    

    My mom also used the thin knife-blade trick but to keep the bottom
    from sticking, she NEVER greased the pan.  She took a brown paper
    bag (the kind from the grocery store), traced the pan bottom and
    cut out the paper bag.  It fit in the bottom of the pan.  She
    poured the batter right on top of it.  After the cake cooled, she
    used the knife to cut the cake away from the pan sides, turned it
    upside down on a cake rack and just peeled the brown paper off
    the top.
    
    Worked like a charm.  She used this method with ALL cakes, not
    just angelfood.
    
    Sandie

    My mom used waxed paper for the same thing.  It's probably a better
    choice these days, since the manufacturers sometimes fog the 
    warehouses where they store paper products and there are often
    pesticide residues on brown bags.  That's why grocery bags should
    not be used for cooking turkeys - the cooking bags are not treated
    with pesticides.
    
    --Louise

Brown parchment paper especially for cooking is also available and works
very well.  You get a very flat angel food cake if you use oil/grease.

    help on angel food cake....mine fell out of the pan and was about a
    half inch thick.....now it is in the trash....what did i do wrong???

    Did you grease the pan?  You should not grease pans for angel-food
    cake, since the cake needs to be able to "climb" the pan.
    
    --L

    No I did not grease the pan, I thought I followed the dirctions, I can
    not figure out what I did wrong.

    Hmm.  I user this "rule of thumb" whenever I'm making Angel Food
    Cakes:  Rewash all utensils before starting!  You never know what oils
    might be clinging to a bowl that's been sitting, or beaters, or
    scrapers, or measuring cups, or...  Get the idea?  I am serious.  I get
    out all the utensils I need and I wash them in hot soapy water, even if
    they look clean.  Then I make sure they are thoroughly dry before
    starting (I rinse before drying, of course! ;-).
    
    Did you make the cake from scratch or from a mix?  I tend not to make
    scratch Angel cakes (but I bet WILDE does!  she makes everything from
    scratch!), but I believe there are "guidelines" for the eggs.  Is it
    room temperature for egg whites?  (Actually, when baking eggs should
    almost always be at room temperature.)  Would the age of the eggs make
    a difference?  (My "instinct" tells me it would, but I have no actual
    experience with this.)
    
    Did you hang the cake upside down after it was baked?  (I'm assuming
    you did, since it fell out of the pan.)  Was it 1/2 inch thick before
    you took it out of the oven?
    
    
    Susan

    My guess would be that when you were folding in the flour mixture
    you crushed the eggwhites.  (My sister did this once - she beat
    in the flour!  Saddest looking angel food cake you ever saw).
    

two rules of thumb:

get someone who knows how to bake this cake demonstrate to you just how far
to whip the egg whites.  If you beat them too much, they actually deflate from
their ideal condition.  As the egg whites are the only leavening, they cake
will fall if they are overbeaten.  You want the egg whites to be at room
temperature before starting, and you want to beat only until they form nice
stiff peaks.  They should still be glossy - NOT dry.  This is one sitation 
where "more" is NOT better.

Also, the act of adding the dry ingredients is very delicate.  You need to
FOLD the dry ingredients into the whites, very delicately, in order to avoid
deflating your egg whites.  Again, description doesn't do it as good as a
visual aid.  Perhaps you have a friend who will demonstrate?  If not, buy
more eggs and practice....even flat angel food cake is still good if cut
into cubes and served with fresh, slightly sweeted strawberries and cream.

to fold, you want to sprinkle approx 1/3 of the dry ingredients over the
top of the egg whites and, using a spatula (rubber kind), gently fold the
egg whites over the dry, rotating the dish approx. 1/4 turn each fold.  Mix
just until the dry is incorporated, which should take no more than 3 - 4 folds.
Repeat with the rest of the dry ingredients.  fold a very few times more
if necessary to mix the dry with the egg whites.  Turn into the pan and smooth
the top of the batter very gently with your spatula - don't press down at
anytime.  Bake as directed.

    I, too, have trouble with angel food cakes; I have my grandmother's
    scratch recipe and she made the best cakes in the world.  I always had
    angel cake for my birthday and now my 18-year-old daughter wants them,
    too, so I tried one. It looked like Mt. St. Helens eruption!  There was
    batter falling out of that cake all OVER my oven.  So I tried a mix,
    thinking that any moron could do that: WRONG!!!  Another overhang.  I
    ended up cutting the mushrooming top off and then it was fine (the cake
    itself was delicious), but definitely shorter than it should be.  So
    this year I decided to do the foolproof thing: I ordered an angel food
    cake at Crosby's Bakery in Nashua, and it was great!

    RE: The Overhang...... Todays pans are much smaller than the ones of
    years past.  We used to make Angel Cakes frequently.... My father
    raised chickens, for both wholesale and retail of eggs.... Guess who
    ended up with all the cracked or inperfect eggs.  We did, and just as
    Roosevelt wanted we had a chicken every Sunday.
    
    Back to the cake.  I noticed that my mothers angel cake pan was much
    larger than mine, hers held more like 14 cups where the ones in the
    stores today hold 10/12 cups.  I have now inherited her pan and it
    makes wonderful cakes, I use it for sponge cakes also.  Maybe some of
    the gourmet shops would carry the larger size pan.  
    
    Another suggestion, is fill your cake pan about 1/2 full, maybe a
    little more, then make cupcakes out of the rest.... They are great
    sliced in half with fresh strawberries on them, drizzled with a touch
    of bittersweet chocolate and topped with sweetened whipped cream.
    
    Bon

GOOD NEWS!!  I've discovered a source for dried egg albumen--or egg white
powder.  Even being the purist that I am, this beats having to figure out what
to do with a dozen leftover egg yolks.  The equivalent of one egg white is
1-3/4 tea. powder + 2 TB water.   I discovered this product while ordering 
meringue powder, an ingredient in a low-cal version of chocolate mousse, from
a company called The Maid of Scandinavia in Minneapolis, MN.  

>GOOD NEWS!!  I've discovered a source for dried egg albumen--or egg white
>powder.  Even being the purist that I am, this beats having to figure out what
>to do with a dozen leftover egg yolks.  The equivalent of one egg white is
>1-3/4 tea. powder + 2 TB water.   I discovered this product while ordering 
>meringue powder, an ingredient in a low-cal version of chocolate mousse, from
>a company called The Maid of Scandinavia in Minneapolis, MN.  

please post the address somewhere...I need this stuff.

    RE: .16
    
    Even better, please post that recipe for the "low-cal" chocolate
    mousse--in the appropriate note, of course...
    
    Incidentally, I've been able to find meringue powder at local cake
    decorating shops.  Don't know about the dried egg albumen, though...
    
    

    
    RE: .17
    
    Note 3452.2 has info on Maid of Scandinavia
    
    

Living in mortal terror of the fierce co-moderator Danielle with her 
avenging writelock   ;^)   I don't wish to start another note even 
though I can't locate one with this heading.

Anyone know if there is a recipe here for Devlis Food Cake? Doesn't it 
use up the egg yolks from the Angels Food Cake, or am I misled? Can 
someone post it? (Start another note if it's permitted, rather than 
sticking it here!)

Thanks in advance
Much munch

Sheridan
:^)

    
    
    Devil's food cake recipes can be found under "Chocolate Cake" in
    note 26.  Specifically, check replies 48 and 65.  
    
    dm
    (the fierce co-moderator with an avenging writelock... 08^)
    

(I *was* only kidding)

Thanks for the pointer,
Sheridan
:^)

    I'm so excited!  I just found the most wonderful angel food pan -- it's
    normal aluminum bakeware -- but the size is 16x4x4 1/2" -- a looong
    loaf pan.  You could also use it for a loong pound cake too.  
    
    I made an angel food cake (from the box) in my new pan, sliced it 
    length-wise (making 2 layers), filled the middle with whipped cream and
    strawberries, put the top on and topped it with more whipped cream and
    strawberries. 
    
    This may be old news to some of you -- but I've not seen this pan
    before.  Locally (N.H.) I found it in the kitchen supply section of
    T.J. Maxx.
    
    Carel