Series 4, Episode 1, Angel Food Cake

I treated myself to a new cake tin for this recipe in the hope that I’d like it and want to bake it again.

Here’s the recipe: https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/angel_food_cake_with_04002

I’d never tried an angel food cake before so had no idea what it was going to taste like. I like that this recipe also includes what to do with your 10 egg yolks. Usually I just add spare eggs to full eggs and scramble them, but I wasn’t hungry enough for 10 yolks. Since I’m not able to watch the episodes anymore I did actually do a bit of research on this cake – I have to serve it to people so wanted it to work out. I got some tips from this which I will share with you.

• Use an electric whisk or mixer for your egg whites
• Separate your eggs one at a time using a small bowl, before adding to the rest of the separated eggs (that one’s from me)
• Don’t butter the sides of the tin. The cake needs to be able to stick to the tin so that it can rise and stay risen
• The cake pan has a tube in the centre and have feet round the outside. The tube is to help it cook in the middle and to stop it from sinking. The feet are so that the cake can be turned upside down and still have air get to it underneath to cool it down
• Turn the pan upside down as soon as the cake is cooked. This means that the cake will hold its structure whilst cooling down. My tin was in 2 parts with a removable tube in the middle covering the bottom of the tin. I was worried that this would fall out when I turned it upside down but the cake managed to hold it up

I’ve separated so many eggs in the last few years but still get anxious that I’ll break the yolk when cracking the shell. I managed without any casualties for this though, here’s what 10 egg whites look like:

I noticed that my stand mixer was quite slow in getting the egg whites to peaks compared to using my hand mixer. I’d never tried it with my stand mixer before so I wasn’t sure whether it was due to the volume of eggs or whether my stand mixer just isn’t that good at whisking (it’s not a fancy one). Does anyone have any thoughts on this? I got there eventually though, here they are after being whipped up, mixed with the other ingredients and put into my fancy new baking tin:

The recipe said to bake from 45 to 50 minutes, but I checked it after 40 and it looked fine. The top cracked when I poked it to see whether it would spring back, but not to detriment of the cake. Here it is all turned out and ready to decorate:

I’ve never made lemon curd before and actually had no idea what it was even made of. There’s a lot of sugar in lemon curd, so even though it calls itself lemon, I don’t think it counts as one of your 5 a day. I’m not quite sure I got it right as the two jars I have left have separated in the fridge. Passionfruit is one of those fruits which don’t look very appetising but actually taste great, which just goes to show that you shouldn’t judge food on appearances.

Here’s my finished angel food cake, I put slices of lemon next to it in an attempt to make it look fancy but the mess I made of the cream sort of ruins it:

Here’s a slice of the cake, it’s very white inside:

I thought that this tasted absolutely delicious. The sponge was very sweet. moist and airy, I really liked it. People who tried it described it as “lovely”, “good” and “fluffy”, so I was pleased with the positive feedback. One person even asked if they could drink the leftover lemon and passionfruit drizzle (he didn’t).

Thanks for reading.

Lily

https://www.instagram.com/lilylilysparks/