Now that you have learned the basics of meringue making, let’s make what some people think is a difficult dessert: an angelic angel food cake. It really isn’t difficult when you learn that most recipes steer you wrong.
When learning to make this dessert, I have to warn you first and foremost: Store bought cake mix often uses Sodium Lauryl Sulphate or other rising agents and the texture is often different from homemade.
Without a doubt, yes, that is the foaming agent in shampoos and conditioners. Which in itself doesn’t make it a bad thing. However, this ingredient can cause an allergic skin reaction to certain people. I’m one of them so I avoid it at all costs.
There are two schools of thought: be a purist and don’t add leaveners or stabilizers such as cream or tartar and baking powders. They view this as cheating and will swear they can make the perfect cake without these ingredients. Which it can be done, absolutely. I’ll teach that method here but will also give the directions for baking powder since it is cheaper than cream of tartar and easier to find in stores.
I do encourage all new bakers to add in that two teaspoons of baking powder or one and one-half teaspoon of cream of tartar to help stabilize the batter and add loft. If you look at the angel cakes in bakeries, nearly all of them use baking powder.
Why? It adds a lighter crumb than the traditional method, is cheap and isn’t as heavy. But the main reason is because they need that assurance that their cakes will rise to minimize loss of profits. And being an accountant, I’m all for saving resources such as electricity, gas, ingredients and time over pride.
The only real tip when making angel food cake? You do NOT want stiff peaks. This leads to a tighter crumb and a more dense cake. Recipes that state go to stiff peaks do not understand that you want the egg whites to rise and expand in the oven, but once you hit stiff peaks, you’ve exhausted your rising ability.
Therefore, stiff peaks is more appropriate for meringue kisses and pavlova where you want the structure to stay the same, just dry out. Why do they keep promoting this, then? Because it lets you fold in ingredients pretty severely but it’s more difficult to knock out all the air you created.
To prove my point, I’ll make two cakes. One to stiff peaks and one to medium soft peaks with no baking powder added. I’ll let you judge the results. Which method will you use to make angelic angel food cake?
First cake: stiff peaks 
Sifted and added in batter in halves. 
Scrap around the sides and draw the spatula in through the middle, turn 1/4 turn. 
Add remaining flour and sugar. 
At first, it takes a while, but keep gently folding. 
But careful not to deflate the air, but with a stiff meringue, you can be more vigorous than you think. 
Put mixture in an ungreased pan. It will need leveled out in the pan as it’s a dense batter. 
Do the best you can. 
It will rise a little in the oven, but not much. 
Pull from oven when skewer comes out clean and top isn’t sticky. 
Very important: cool upside down. Run a knife around the edges if it sticks to the pan and let it gently tip out by supporting it with a rack once cool. 
After completely cooled, you remove it from the pan and let it continue sit upside down until ready to serve. 
This is the crumb structure of many recipes out there. It’s lighter than a traditional cake, but not as light as you’d expect. 
This is an antique pan that was given to me. Don’t forget, don’t grease it. 
Again, you’ll sift the ingredients,. 
But this time, only go to soft peak stage. 
The folding is the exact same. 
But it will deflate a bit more. That’s expected, just try not to knock all the air out. 
It will be more fluid 
And nearly levels itself. However, the magic happens in the oven, just wait! 
Cool the exact way. 
Look at the loft on this cake! 
It’s nearly as tall as my hand! 
Let’s compare the first and second cake. 
First cake structure, it collapsed a little despite taking care. 
Second cake seriously feels lighter and melts in your mouth. Which do you prefer? Either way is great! 
Second cake is lofty and airy.
Classic Angel Food Cake
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups (360g) egg whites
- 1 ½ cups (300g) sugar
- 1 cup (120g) cake or all-purpose flour
- 2 tsp (8g) baking powder*
- 1 tsp (5mL) vanilla extract
- ½ tsp (2.5g) salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375F (190C.)
- Wash throughly a 10" tube pan to ensure it is free of grease. Do not use spray or grease.
- Sift together flour, baking powder and 3/4 cup of the sugar. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, beat egg whites and salt with a mixer on low speed until foamy. Gradually add the remaining sugar in the form of a gentle stream. Beat on medium speed until soft peaks form. Beat in vanilla until just combined.
- Add dry ingredients to egg whites by folding in 1/5 of the mixture in at a time. This prevents the egg whites from deflating too much. Pour and level batter into the pan.
- Bake 35-45 minutes or until top is no longer sticky, bounces back when touched and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Center should read between 200F (93C) and 210F (99C.)
- Cool cake upside down to prevent the cake from collapsing. This will take around 1 – 2 hours. Run a clean knife around edges of pan and carefully remove the cake.
Hello
What happens if I add cornstarch to the batter?
Should the sugar be superfine?
Hello Tahere,
If you add cornstarch to the batter without removing any of the flour, the cake will be more dense. If you are trying to make cake flour, for every cup of flour, you remove 1 tablespoon of flour and replace it with 1 tablespoon of cornstarch. This will make the cake more delicate and airy. The sugar can be regular granulated sugar. The superfine will work great, but it’s not necessary for this recipe.
Thank you very much.
Another question: Can i use cupcake pans,
Hi Tahere,
You can use cupcake pans, but you’d need to line the bottom with parchment to get them to release. You would still invert the pan and then gently run a knife around the edges after they cooled to help them release. If your cupcake tin is non-stick, you’d want to use a silicone or plastic knife in order to not scratch or mar the non-stick coating. Start checking for doneness around 18-20 minutes if using the cupcake tin.
I just cut into cake. For some reason not as lofty as yours. Also it has an “eggy” spongy taste to it?
Any ideas? Thank you
Hello Jeanine, sorry for the delay in responding. Your comment got stuck in the spam filter. The loftiness of the cake comes down to the rising agent (baking powder) and how much or little you whip up the eggs and how vigorous you fold in the flour mixture. If your baking powder is a little old, if you whip up the eggs a bit too much or fold in the flour mixture a little too much, it will deflate some. The eggy flavor often comes down to one of two things: the age of the eggs or extract. Older eggs often develop a sulfury odor as moisture evaporates through the shell and the remainder becomes more concentrated. It’s best to use fresh eggs for angel food case. The other cause could be the extract. If it is older, it loses flavor as it ages. You can combat both these issues by increasing the flavoring to two teaspoons or adding 1 tsp of almond extract or lemon juice to the vanilla. Some are also more sensitive to the taste of eggs in general and should always consider adding double the amount of flavoring any recipe calls for to combat this sensitivity. Hope this helps answer what could have went wrong.
just took cake out of oven. after 35 minutes tookpick came out clean. Maybe my oven is hotter. i did 375 degrees.
Jen, thank you for the feedback! The stove I made this recipe in was very small and had temperature swings toward the end of its days. (There is a post on here somewhere discussing its temperature issues.) It’s a very good possibility you are correct. I’m going to go crack some eggs and test the recipe’s timing out. I went back and looked and thankfully there was only a couple others I made with that stove but the ones I did I’m going to double check those times as well. So thanks for bringing this up! I will update the recipes promptly. Good on you for watching the cake carefully. 😊
You are mostly correct on leaving some chance left in the air bubbles for expansion during baking, but not entirely. Often it is depending on the percentage of protein contained in the eggs you sorce for the cake. A young chicken egg will respond much better to “over whipping than an old hen egg will. How the individual Baker folds their batter greatly contributes to this as does how fast they add the flour to the batter. When stiff peaks are formed add flour more slowly and batter will improve in ability to rise and not fall after baking. I believe this is due to the difficulty of uniform dispersal of flour in a stiff batter. Fun to learn from others out here and get some thoughts. My credentials on angel food cakes are 27 years professional Baker, approximately 400,000 cakes personally baked 3 at a time in a 20 qt mixer. I found this site as I am facing a problem locating frozen whites that contain guar gum as the whipping aid, and am being left with only the SLS option. May have to go back to fresh eggs, they make the nicest cakes anyway.
Fantastic to share all this information! This would make total sense as my eggs are straight from the backyard hens. You’ve definitely got a ton more experience than I do when it comes to baking cakes, especially angel food. You also totally explain why my cake collapsed in the middle when I went to stiff peaks. I’ll have to try again with your method of going slowly with the addition of the flour. Stiff peaks and I never got along with angel food cake. Thank you so much for your wealth of knowledge. I totally enjoy learning from a professional. Isn’t the internet amazing how it can connect you to others? Good luck finding your frozen egg whites with guar gum. Try contacting rembrantfoods. They are the only ones around here that still uses the addition over SLS. They have a contact number on their site and could likely help you find a source!
Hi, do you recommend baking powder over cream of tartar, or they are about the same ? I have both, but wondering if the baking powder is more reliable?
Thank you!
Hi Chesley, I prefer to use baking powder as it is more reliable and gives more consistent results. Both will work well, but the cream of tartar doesn’t really help with the rise and really only stabilizes the meringue. I personally do not use cream of tartar as it is a byproduct of wine making and is extremely deadly to dogs if ingested (same thing that makes raisins and grapes so toxic.) Since I am prone to dropping items on the floor, I no longer bake with it.