Angel Food

I've been digging through some cookbooks I have hoarded. I have this thing for old cookbooks. Well, for new ones too, but old ones because our culture is so defined by the food we prepare. I especially love those regional, church, work, or group-type cookbooks where everyone submits some recipes. I have a really great one of those put out by DuPont some years ago and it's loaded with recipes based in many ethnicities since DuPont is so big.

I also have a really interesting cookbook on Japanese cooking from 1954, one on cooking meals for two from 1975, and The Mike Douglas Cookbook from 1969 which features favorite recipes from folks like Richard M. Nixon and Zsa Zsa Gabor. My current favorite, however, is two-book set called Meta Given's Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking, published in 1959. It's absolutely loaded with everything a homemaker at the time would ever need to know about feeding her family - including budgeting, food waste per unit, menus, and my personal favorite how-to chapter - "How to Do Those Little Puzzling Kitchen Jobs" - you know things like 'butter elaboration', 'parboiling', and 'How to Grind Horseradish Without Tormenting the Eyes' (hint: it involves dampening cheesecloth and making like a bank robber in an old Western flick).

Anyway, I'm enjoying this set, and peruse it when I get the chance. There are definately some things in here I may never make, ever - say, Creamed Tuna on Toast Points. But the baking sections are great because Meta Given is out to make this pretty comprehensive. The Why's AND the How's if you will. I've never made Angel Food Cake before so I figured I'd give her recipe a go - especially after comparing it to some others I had on hand which did not elaborate exactly what shape the egg whites were supposed to be in when they were ready.

So, snowed in and hankering to bake, I gave it a shot. I refused to use an electric mixer, for which I'm glad, but sadly, I did not use a correct pan. See, I have this wonderful rose-shaped tube pan from Nordicware, that I figured would be lovely. Really, what it ended up being was my husband and I crowded around the cake pan scooping out perfect, moist, crumblychewycrusted, steaming handfuls of cake and stuffing them into our mouths because it simply would not evacuate the pan, and I knew this, so I gave up even waiting for it to cool.

I even pounced on my brother, who was asleep in his room, woke him up, stuffed a wad of warm cake in his hand and told him to eat it and go back to sleep. I poked my head in the door a bit ago and he was smiling and had crumbs all over his face. Just so you all know, he would have gotten up in an hour and gone digging for a midnight snack, anyway.

So the results as you can see were rather ugly but the cake itself was amazing. I used Softasilk cake flour and the whites of 11 organic eggs.

An excerpt from the text: "Now hold bowl slightly tipped, turn it slowly and beat with a flat wire whip until whites are stiff enough to hold pointed, glossy peaks. Now set bowl flat on table, and add remaining sugar in 6 portions, sifting it over whites, beating about 20 strokes after each portion. Then beat in flavorings with 10 more strokes. Add flour-sugar mixture in 5 portions sifting each portion over whites, and turning bowl slowly, fold in gently but thoroughly with wire whip using 20 complete fold-over strokes after the first 4 portions, then use 40 strokes to blend in the last portion."

Not much room for error, eh? Yes, I actually counted my strokes. Next time I'll use a proper pan. I think I'm going to go stuff another fistfull of cake in my face and refill my coffee.