angelfood cake

last week i made some delicious meyer lemon curd (goes great on fresh english muffins!) and that recipe calls for three egg yolks.  so i had three egg whites leftover.  not being one to throw away perfectly good egg bits, i decided to try an angelfood cake.  i’m sure there are other, easier things to do with egg whites (omelets come to mind) but i can’t think of a more delicious way to use them.  plus, i’d never really made one by myself and i was a little bit intimidated by the whole “whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form” part of the recipe.  i’m always afraid that i’ll whip the eggs too little or (worse!) too much, but i’ve been doing more of those types of recipes recently to try to tackle that skill head-on.

my favorite angelfood cake has always been my grandma’s recipe, so i called her up and she gave it to me over the phone, complete with those little tips that don’t come in recipe books–like “to find out whether or not the cake is done, just look in the cracks for wet bubbles.  when there are no more wet bubbles, then the cake is done.”  i also learned the secret that makes her recipe better than anyone else’s– she leaves out the almond flavoring and only uses vanilla*.

i don’t have a real angelfood cake pan, but i decided to try baking it in my springform pan with the faux bundt cake bottom.  it’s a lot smaller than a standard angelfood cake pan, so i cut the recipe in half (plus, the recipe originally called for 12 egg whites and i only needed to get rid of three.  anyone have a good use for three egg yolks?).  the half-batch of batter fit perfectly and after waiting an extra 15 minutes, i decided that the “wet bubbles” were gone.  this is a strange cake because you have to cool the cake upside-down completely before slicing into it.  the next morning when i unmolded it, it was a little sticky (which i remember from past cakes), maybe a little fallen in one corner, but it was also perfectly delicious.  even better with mashed strawberries from last summer and a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

and i love the way it looks in my glass cake stand–down to the last slice. yum.  thanks again, grandma!

* i’m not so fond of almond flavoring–i find it overpowers most recipes.