Monday, June 7, 2010

Angel Food Cake

We went strawberry-picking yesterday morning. Our local pick-your-own just started up this past week, the berries were insanely bountiful, the sun was shining... It was just lovely. The girls ate them while we picked, and continued to eat piles of them in the car, starting before we even got out of the parking lot. They probably ate a few little spiders along with the berries, but whatever. (Also, very cute aside: Mimi's method of "picking" was to take berries out of my flat and go put them in Josh's.)

Strawberries don't keep very long so I wanted to make a shortcake or angel food cake to go with them. I decided on angel food cake, and figured I'd try baking one myself since they have like 2 ingredients in them (OK, 6) and I happened to have a lot of eggs in the fridge. I chose this recipe at random, I suspect they're all pretty much the same.

The one thing holding me back: separating the eggs. It grosses me out in such a big way. But I decided to pull up my big-girl pants and deal with the nauseating goo and glop, and I did it! I baked an angel food cake! From scratch!

The second-best part of making angel food cake is balancing it on a bottle while it's cooling.



The best part is eating it.



The cake came out great. I was surprised by how well it came out, by how "normal" it tasted -- meaning, how much it tasted like it came from boxed mix. :) If you ever feel the need for angel food, please bake it from scratch. Aside from separating TWELVE eggs (please don't make me talk about it anymore!), it seriously takes barely any more effort than making it from a box. It is so stupid-easy. And as I was wisely reminded by a pal on FB when I lamented the fact that I'd be SEPARATING A FREAKING DOZEN EGGS (OMG why will you guys not let me stop talking about this??), you can just always buy a carton of organic egg whites.

And also, am I the only person who thinks angel food cake sort of smells like wet dog? Anyhoo... Still delicious, wet dog and gross-out goo and all.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow - I have never attempted an angel food cake, but after seeing your results, I think I'll have to try one. The cartons of egg whites are great but because of the way they treat them, they may not whip up quite as high as regular eggs. Still, worth it if it prevents all that separating!

Unknown said...

I'm already out of berries (thanks to jam, fruit salad, and a berry pie) so we'll be going for round two! I really want angel food cake too - I will learn from you and pick up a carton of egg whites :)

Eva said...

but.... if you buy the carton of whites where will you get yolks for making ice cream?

Mama Karen said...

How did you do the bottle balancing thing? Wet dog really nah ell maybe but it tastes great!

The Grasshoppa:Triplets Plus Two Momma said...

I could really use one of those today..and a beer. Ya know, for balancing stuff on. (not)

And the egg white thing....um..no.

Just untangling my iPod headphones makes me sob uncontrollably.