The Return Of The Angel Food Cake

I'm not sure we've succeeded yet. This time I tried Alton Brown's recipe from Food Network. I originally rejected this one because of the somewhat fussier amounts of ingredients and instructions, but after the pathetic result I got with Emeril's, it didn't look so bad. It resulted in a higher, fluffier cake, to be sure, but the overall taste and consistency reminded me of a marshmallow. It was gummy, sticky, and awfully sweet. I questioned the amount of sugar listed in the recipe (it seemed like a LOT), and that might be part of the problem. Those of you out there who play with sugar on a regular basis will understand the hygroscopic nature of something loaded with sugar on a warm, humid day: it's a sponge. Within hours of baking it, the outside was covered with a sweat of moisture.

Not only that, the thing slipped the surly bonds of the cake pan after I had turned it upside down to cool, as per the instructions, and fallen on the countertop around the beer bottle I had used to suspend it. So it sat, slowly sticking to the countertop and being compressed under its own weight for a couple of hours. I managed to scrape it free, place it on a platter and garnished the hell out of it with fresh herbage and violets. A liberal topping of sliced strawberries later, and it was good. Another food save!

Why, you may ask, is something that is not even close to chocolate worth all this screwing around? Do you actually have to ask me that? It's a matter of principle at this point. No, I will not use a boxed mix! Do not even suggest such a thing to me. My dear friend Sharon said, multiple times mind you, 'oh my mom uses a mix'. This is doubly aggravating because it says she doesn't bother to take the time to bake herself, and strongly hints that I should get over myself, give up my rocket science kitchen experiments, and come into the light of prepackaged convenience foods manufactured by people who know what they're doing. **big fat raspberry noise** Screw that.

Eggs, sugar, flour, and just a couple of additional ingredients: it should not be that hard. Here is the deceptiveness of something like angel food cake. Can you make a meringue, can you sift properly, and can you employ the technique of folding? These are basic skills any decent cook should know. Not difficult, but if done incorrectly...

I suspect the problems with this recipe are too much sugar, and the fact that I deliberately did not use cake flour. My bad. Well, the stuff I had is questionable due to how long it has sat in the pantry. Cake flour is lower in protein, and is milled finer than all-purpose. Most of the time you can get away with using AP, but maybe this is one of those times where you can't.

There is another recipe I have that I plan to try (one of our grocery stores is sure to have eggs on sale again soon!). I'll get over this just as soon as I have success. I swear.

Time to clean up the kitchen...