I revisited the failed angel food cake from last week and had great success with it. It turns out, the many things I had done wrong were indeed to blame. If you follow the directions, it turns out pretty amazing if I must say so myself.

This recipe combines three different angel food cake recipes I have seen over the years. I took a few things from all of them and ended up with something pretty great. I hope you enjoy it too!

What you will need

• 10-inch tube pan
• Mixer
• Working brain

Ingredients

• 12 eggs (1 1/2 cups)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cups powdered sugar
• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Mom it Down!

Put egg whites in your mixer and let them warm to room temperature. (I have cut corners here a bit and things turned out fine, but it’s best to get them closest to room temperature as possible.)

Preheat oven to 350.

In separate bowl, sift together flour, powdered sugar, and cocoa powder. (Or see my shortcut at the end of this post.)

Once eggs are close to room temperature, add extract, salt and cream of tartar. Using the whisk attachment, beat that until it’s bubbly.

Add granulated sugar. Mix on high until it forms hard peaks.

Slowly spoon in flour mixture about 1/4 cup at a time. (You can slowly beat this with your mixer using the flat beater attachment. Just go slowly.)

Spoon mixture into an ungreased tube pan. Sprinkle with almond slices.

Bake at 350 for 40 to 45 minutes.

You’re done!

Overcoming Obstacles

I always try and sprinkle the top of my angel food cakes because it covers up the cracks and other blemishes. :] I know. I cheat. But it also adds a wonderful flavor. The almonds come out slightly crunchy—so good! And they go really well with chocolate.

Also: I mentioned above you can use your flat beater attachment to spoon in the flour mixture. It’s up to you. I usually do a mixture of both—starting with the attachment and then moving on to doing it by hand.

Lastly, if you don’t have time to sift the flour mixture together, which is what you’re supposed to do, you can easily use a wire whisk and just give it a good stir, breaking up the big chunks.

Variations

Next time, I want to try more cocoa and add chocolate chips to the top. I almost did that this time, but was worried that they might be too heavy. I wanted to make sure this worked before getting too groovy. Now that I know it does, I’m going to purchase some of the miniature chips and add them to the top.

I also think there’s room to add some other flavored extracts, but again haven’t messed with this too much yet myself.

I should mention that the only thing I changed was that I used regular, all-purpose flour instead of cake flour. I reckon using cake flour would make it even fluffier.

As usual, let me know if you have suggestions and/or questions!