Claire Bakes Angel Food Cake

I'm on a mission to rescue angel food cake

from the kind of like little bit

stayed grandmotherly dessert

that people associate with being too sweet

and kind of spongy,

and really bring it back because

I think it's a wonderful dessert

with a really special texture,

and it's such a nice canvas for like

any seasonal fruit that you have around.

So, especially for summer time

with all the berries and stone fruit,

I think it's a really nice dessert to try

if you haven't ever made it before.

[catchy rock music]

So, angel food cake, many people probably had it,

but I think it's mostly likely not a recipe

a lot of people have made before

because it does require a special pan.

It requires a tube pan, which is what this is.

What you want for this recipe

is an aluminum tube pan like this.

You do not want to use a non-stick tube pan,

which I don't really know why they make them.

Now, angel food cake is a meringue based spongecake.

Meringue means that it's a mixture of

egg whites and sugar.

So, I have one and three quarter cups egg whites.

You'll have to crack between like

a dozen and 14 large eggs

to get this many egg whites,

so you'll have a ton of yolks left over.

One important tip is you want to make sure

the bowl of your mixer is really clean,

that there's no fat on it,

because that is going to

make it more difficult to whip a light meringue.

I'm gonna leave that there for now,

because first I have to mix together

my dry ingredients.

I have cake flour.

So, cake flour is kind of the ticket here,

and I'm going to just mix it together with

some powdered sugar.

And the powdered is a nice like stabilizing agent

because we want to make sure

that the meringue retains all the air

that we're gonna whip into it.

It's always good to sift cake flour because

it can get pretty lumpy.

And now I'm gonna start mixing

everything together in the bowl,

gonna start with my egg whites.

Now, before I start whipping this,

I'm going to add my cream of tartar,

and it's an acid, acids act as a stabilizer

for egg whites.

And a little bit of salt.

The first thing you want to do

when you're beating egg whites

is to mix them on low,

just to kind of break up and liquefy

that mass of whites.

So, eventually these egg whites,

it's gonna be a dramatic transformation.

We went from this like clear liquid egg whites

in the bowl.

I'm gonna get this into a meringue

that's almost to the very top of the bowl.

So I'm gonna increase the speed a little bit now,

they're getting nice and foamy.

And once I start to see some air

worked into the whites,

I can see this nice, white foam,

I'm gonna start to add my granulated sugar.

And I want to add this very slowly.

I want to be able to see the individual grains,

like cascading into the bowl.

If I were to add all of this sugar at once,

it really overwhelm the meringue,

and I would not be able to get

the kind of volume that I want.

So, this is a cake that does not

have any chemical leavener.

It doesn't have baking powder,

it doesn't have baking soda.

All of the lightness in this cake

comes from the air that I'm whipping into the whites.

You can see that they've like

almost more than quadrupled in volume.

Okay, so that's all the sugar.

Now, I want to continue to beat this on high

until I get to the stage where

the egg whites are stiff, glossy,

and make a firm peak.

So I'm gonna show you exactly what that looks like.

And now I'm at the stage where

the whites are all the way to the top of the whisk.

So I want to be careful because

it's easy to over beat at this stage.

At this stage, also because the volume

of the bowl is so high,

there's kind of like a little bit of a dead zone

around the top of the whisk

where it doesn't quite get all of that egg white,

so I want to just kinda mix it a little bit by hand.

I'm gonna go a little bit further.

So that is a droopy peak.

We're close.

And at this stage, it's again,

very easy to over beat.

If I were to beat the egg whites too much,

they start to have an almost curdled look,

like they get kinda some texture,

and then it's very hard to incorporate the dry ingredients.

So one thing I also like to do

when I get a dead zone like this,

is I'll lift up the whisk a little bit,

and then you start to see

the marks of the whisk.

It's when you have that ring of meringue

that's not being incorporated in the bowl

that you can easily over beat.

So here we are, this is a firm peak.

It's kind of like a bird beak.

[wondrous music]

Glossy, it's a dense foam,

this is what we want.

Now before I take the bowl out of the mixer,

I'm gonna add a very small amount of liquid

in the form of vanilla extract for flavor,

and two tablespoons of lemon juice.

This has a couple of purposes.

One, the lemon juice and the vanilla flavor.

The lemon juice adds a tiny bit of acidity

that I think balances out

what can be kind of an overwhelming sweetness

in the cake.

So, I removed the bowl from the mixer

just so I can sift my dry ingredients over top.

I'm gonna do this in thirds,

so I'm just sifting,

this is to eliminate any lumps over the meringue,

and then I'm gonna let the mixer do the work

of like evenly incorporating the dry ingredients

into the meringue.

But the idea at this point

is still to mix it as little as possible.

Yeah, so, I have my oven on 325.

Once you have all your ingredients together,

the cake comes together relatively quickly,

and you do want to get it into the oven.

If you want to work with some amount of speed

because the idea is to not let the egg whites

deflate too much.

That is the last of the dry ingredients.

I want to take the bowl out

and fold everything by hand several times.

I have a nice large, flexible spatula.

I'm looking for any pockets of dry ingredients

that haven't been incorporated,

and I just want to make sure

everything is homogenous and well mixed.

And I'm using this folding technique

where you take sort of enlarged strokes.

You scrape from the bottom and fold over,

and that is a gentle way of mixing

so that I don't lose a lot of the volume.

I'm only going to pour about half of the batter in

because something that happens with angel food cake

is often because the batter is so light,

you get like weird air pockets.

If I were to go in all at once,

the batter would kind of fall onto itself,

and like trap air.

So then I can use an offset spatula or a spoon,

and I'm just trying to work the batter

around the base of the cake,

and into those like right angles

where the bottom meets the sides.

Both the tube and the outer sides.

And this is to eliminate air bubbles.

And I even like to sort of work it up the sides

and up the tube,

and it makes like a little bit of a trough

in the center.

But again, this is I found the best way

to avoid big air pockets.

And now the rest of the batter.

And I do pour it all around the pan.

If you pour all the way onto one side,

then it's hard to distribute the batter evenly.

This is a really fun batter to work with.

Now, I'm just using that same small offset spatula

to smooth it all out,

and again, trying to work it

to avoid air pockets.

And then I want to really try my best

to smooth it into a super even level surface.

Okay, that looks good.

I always say that looks good,

and then I fuss with it

for like another several minutes.

Okay.

Into my 325 oven.

There we go.

In 35 to 40 I'll check back.

I'm looking for an even, golden color.

It'll be very puffed,

there'll be a crack in like the center ring,

and will spring back when I press down

in the center.

So, all right.

The cake is ready to come out,

and I'm gonna show you the best way to cool it down.

Okay.

This angel food pan has these little stilts

which are designed for cooling the cake.

So, the cake has to be cooled upside down.

There is so little structure in the cake,

and it's so light, and there's so much air,

that if I were to cool it upright, it would collapse

underneath its own weight,

because it has very tall sides.

So, to cool it down it needs to be upside down.

If your pan has these little stilts,

you can just do it this way,

but another good trick,

'cause sometimes the pans,

especially the older ones don't have these,

is you can use a wine bottle,

and you just thread the wine bottle neck

through the center hole.

But just like that.

Now, the cake will not fall out

because we did not grease the sides,

so it's pretty firmly in there.

And that's another reason why

you don't want to use a non-stick pan.

You use this light colored, aluminum tube pan

because a non-stick pan you risk

the whole thing sliding out,

which has happened to my mom before.

So this will have to cool for

at least two hours like this,

so you want to be able to touch the sides

and have there be no warmth or heat

coming from the cake.

So after a couple of hours,

I took the cake off of the wine bottle,

and it's just here.

But before I unmold it,

I'm gonna mix together my toppings.

I have a bunch of berries here.

I have very beautiful strawberries,

blackberries, and raspberries.

So I'm gonna let the berries macerate briefly,

but actually I'm gonna do

strawberries and blackberries, not raspberries,

because raspberries don't tend

to release a lot of juice,

and they'll just kind of soften and get mushy.

I'm just gonna have them because

you have to really expose the flesh of the fruit

in order for the juices to release,

and macerating fruit just means mixing it

with a little bit of sugar,

and the sugar draws out the juices

and then you kind of get this beautiful syrup

that you can drizzle around the cake.

I always think about my mom's angel food cake

that we would have at like special occasions,

and I think that she would just thaw

and sweeten frozen strawberries,

it was so good.

I just remember it being like

the most delicious dessert, plus whipped cream.

Now I'm gonna halve some of the blackberries as well.

And these I like to have lengthwise,

they look prettiest that way.

And I always like to, with macerating fruit,

it's always nice to fold in

a little bit of fresh fruit at the end

so you have a combination of fruit

that's a little bit softer and juicer

and then fruit that's super fresh.

So, I'm just gonna toss these with

maybe a tablespoon or two of sugar,

just enough to lightly sweeten.

If you're using in season fruit,

it should already be a little bit sweet.

You could also do a tiny squeeze of lemon juice

which might be nice,

and that kinda gets everything going.

I'm just gonna let these sit here and hang out

and eventually the juices will dry out.

Oh, thank you.

Just do a little bit.

Lemon and sugar just kinda bring out

the flavors of the fruits.

I mean, you could let this sit

for as little as 10 minutes,

as long as a few hours.

So I have very cold cream here.

I'm not gonna sweeten the cream because

angel food cake is already

a fairly sweet dessert.

The berries are lightly sweetened.

I always like a dessert where there's a contrast

between something sweet and not sweet.

Yeah, the bowl is chilled.

A metal bowl works well because

it cools down really quickly.

You can whip cream in a mixer, that's fine.

The only thing about a mixer is

the cream goes from softly whipped to over whipped

really quickly, so you want to kinda

sit there and watch it.

I have no idea how people whipped meringue by hand.

I never do that by hand.

Now it's starting to thicken,

so I can be a bit more vigorous

with how I whip it.

You can see I started to splatter a little bit.

I also like to sometimes hold the bowl

a little lower down because I think I get

better leverage with my arm.

So you're not stirring cream, you're whipping it.

So the idea is to beat in air, so,

you should hear the whisk hitting the side of the bowl.

[whisk whips]

So that looks good, that's softly whipped.

So because the pan was ungreased,

I'm gonna have to cut all the way around

in order to get the cake out,

so I like to use a small offset spatula,

you could use a butter knife, that works too,

or a pairing knife.

Pushing all the way down,

and doing kind of a sawing motion

while I rotate the pan.

So cutting all the way around willh allow me

to pull the inner part of the tube out.

Yeah, depending on your oven

and the heat conduction,

like I've made this cake where it got much more golden

around the top and sides,

but this is fully baked,

so as long as your endpoint indicators are done,

like the tester comes out clean

and it's nice and springy, then you're done.

And now I want to cut around the inner ring, same way.

So the final step is to cut around the bottom,

between the cake and the base of the tube.

So I'm applying a lot of pressure downward

so that I don't end up cutting into the cake.

And then once you do that,

the whole thing should lift off relatively easily.

You can use like two spatulas to lift it off,

but I think that I can just actually

turn the whole thing over.

Oops, took that off my hand a little bit.

And then...

Turn the whole thing upright.

Everything I like about angel food cake

has to do with the texture.

It's just so pillowy and so cloud-like,

and it's like a literal sponge for other favors.

We're gonna plate.

So, for angel food cake,

anytime you have something that is very airy and soft

and easily compressed,

it's a good idea to use a serrated knife

so you don't end up flattening the whole thing.

So just kind of little sawing motions,

and I like a big piece of angel food cake

'cause in my head, I'm like it's mostly air.

Angel food cake was definitely a thing in the 90s

because it's like, fat free,

which has nothing to do with why I like it,

but it was like a thing that we had a lot, I think.

All right, so here's a look at the interior.

It looks so good, it's so uniform.

Like there's a tight structure,

but it's just so, so light

that there's almost like weightlessness for this slice.

So I would say a cake like this

generously feeds eight,

if nobody wants a second slice.

So my favorite way to eat angel food cake

is the way I ate it growing up,

which is with whipped cream and berries.

So this is our really nice softly whipped cream,

and I like to kind of go right on top of it,

but actually I'm gonna do berries first.

So first let me just toss in a few of these raspberries.

Now I put berries first because I want the

direct contact with the cake

so that it can absorb some of the juices.

Because I cut really big slices,

it's not really a flat surface.

[laughing]

They're gonna roll right off.

But oh well.

You can kind of dribble the juices down.

Yeah, well, I'm gonna put whipped cream there,

so I'll be fine.

I really like this combination of berries.

And then a super soft

really cloud-like dollop of cream.

These are some pretty big pieces,

so I'm gonna ask for some help.

Do you guys have an interest

in eating some angel food cake?

You have to talk to the camera.

[Lao] No.

Lao gave a hard pass, okay.

I'm just gonna eat here

and eat the cake by myself.

Hey, Claire.

It's so good, hi.

Is it?

I made you a piece of angel food cake with berries.

Thank you so much, Claire.

[lighthearted music]

It's great for now.

This was like back in the day in the 90s

when sugar was fine, and fat was bad,

and now it's the opposite.

So thanks a lot.

Yeah, fat's coming back.

Nutrition.

Oh, fat is definitely back.

Yeah.

There's definitely sugar present,

but you're not hit with it like,

it's definitely not too sweet.

You don't need to like drink a glass of water

after you eat this.

No.

Well, thank you Claire.

You're welcome.

Take that with you.

I'm gonna take the rest of this with me.

Thank you.

It's so fun to just like pull off pieces of it.

Okay.

I absolutely think it's worth investing

in a tube pan just to make angel food cake.

Of course, you can do other things in it too.

But it's such a wonderful, relatively easy

and quick summer dessert,

but it really is, when made properly,

a dessert with a texture unlike anything else.

So I think it's really special.

I just think angel food cake is a special dessert.

It's so light, there's really nothing else

that quite has this texture,

and I hope that we can kinda bring it back

from like, maybe I just think of it

as a 90s dessert,

doesn't anyone else think of it as that?

But it's really fun to eat,

and also fun to make.

So I hope you try it,

and take advantage of some nice summer fruit.

I'm just like rambling about what I like about it.

[Man] Sorry, one more time.

It keeps for a long time,

sugar is nothing to be afraid of.

Sugar is nothing to be afraid of?

[dramatic music]