Angel Food Cake

Angel food cake is really easy to make. You can eat it straight or with berries or hack it up and make a trifle or you could just EAT IT STRAIGHT. You know, your choice. But eat it straight.

Hardware

An angel food cake pan. Yes, it's basically a single-tasker. Yes, some people fetishize multi-task tools. Yes, you can fake an angel food cake pan using a springform pan. Buy the pan. It's totally worth it. Did I mention that you can eat plain angel food cake? You can!

A large mixing bowl

A medium mixing bowl

A resealable container to keep your egg yolks in

A small bowl or ramekin

A whisk; a French whisk is best, because let's face it, we're making a meringue here and you can get more air into it with a French whisk...but you can also use a regular old balloon whisk

Can I use my stand mixer?

I have read that you should only do this by hand because it's so easy to over-whip your eggs with the mixer. I have only made angel food by hand because I like whipping egg whites. In my opinion, if you don't want to do it by hand, you don't have to. Use the stand mixer if you want to! 

Ingredients

The ingredients for this recipe are listed by volume, but you should measure at least the flour and sugar by weight. I know, you already knew that.

1 cup cake flour 

1 1/2 cup superfine sugar, divided

12 large egg whites

1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

1/2 teaspoon salt

Substitutions

I wouldn't. A lot of times you can get away with cutting together flour and corn starch, but in this case you really, really want the more finely milled flour. And while you can use regular granulated sugar, you're going to be working with egg whites, and a superfine sugar like C&H baker's sugar will have less of a ripping and tearing effect because it dissolves faster. Honest, you'll get better results.

(I use superfine sugar in all of my baking.)

Separating whites

You don't have to be nuts about it. Classic prep says OMFG IF THERE IS EVEN A LITTLE BIT OF YOLK YOU NEED TO START ALL OVER AGAIN, but we're making this to eat. It'll be fine. (Especially if you use a stand mixer.) Use a two-container method to separate the whites, though:

1. Separate a white into your small bowl or ramekin
2. Put the yolk into your resealable container
3. Dump the separated white into the large bowl

That way, if you screw up separating an egg (you will) you only lose one white rather than the whole batch. A little bit of yolk will probably be okay...a total blowout is bad.

Holy cow...twelve whites? What do I do with the yolks?

KEEP THEM! Refrigerate them, or freeze them in an ice cube tray, or do what I do and make yellow cake. You'll need eight of those yolks for that. You can use the others for mayo or something.

Station Prep

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Look at your pan. See that pan? DO NOT DO ANYTHING TO IT. Think about how good the cake will taste when you eat it plain. Think about how fluffy it will be. Think about how angel food cake is light and airy and about how that is mostly achieved by NOT DOING ANYTHING TO YOUR PAN.
3. Seriously. There is no pan prep. If it's clean and dry, that's good enough.

Recipe

1. Sift together the flour and 3/4 cup of sugar in the medium bowl and set it aside.
2. In the large bowl, combine the egg whites, vanilla, cream of tartar, and salt.
3. Either by hand or with the whisk attachment on your stand mixer, whip the egg whites to firm peaks; Google a picture if you need help, but basically when you pull the whisk out, the peaks should hold for a second or so but then deform a bit.
4. Gradually add the remaining 3/4 cup of sugar to the egg white mixture as you continue to whip the whites to stiff peaks; congratulations, it's a meringue.
5. Fold the sifted ingredients into the whites. Don't mix it. Fold it. Your goal here is to integrate the ingredients but not loose all of that precious, precious aeration you worked so hard for.

Bake

40-45 minutes. Use the standard toothpick/skewer method to determine whether you're done.

Cool

Hey, what are those...leg-looking things on the sides of the angel food cake pan?

They're legs!

When the cake is done and you have removed it from the oven, flip it upside down and stand it on those legs. Don't worry--your cake will not fall out. Let it cool completely, then turn it back over. Run a paring knife between the pan and the top of the cake to loosen it, then pull the cake out using the tube. Turn it over again and put the cake on your cake dish or serving plate or what have you. Separate from the tube. Eat.

Did I mention you can eat it plain?