This week’s heavenly cake choice is an angel food cake with a twist. Most angel food cakes I’ve made in the past have been almost flavourless, but not Rose‘s recipe! This cake was really quick & easy to put together, though apparently the trick is in the baking. The most time consuming part for me was grating all the chocolate.
All of us in the heavenly cake baking group who baked Woody’s lemon luxury cake back in November had egg whites galore in our freezers, so it was time to bake angel food. I still have a couple of containers of egg whites in the freezer, but hopefully those will be used up soon with the upcoming chiffons and génoises. I’ll admit, I cheated and used cheap chocolate, because I had some that was sitting in my cupboard getting in my way, so I don’t feel right buying more until that’s gone.
So, you start by beating your egg whites (and sugar and cream of tartar) into a stiff meringue.
I think I overbeat my whites slightly, because they lost a decent amount of volume as I folded in the “Best for Blending” flour (the Canadian equivalent of Wondra) and the chocolate. Speaking of chocolate: I found using a microplane to be more efficient, but much messier than using a rotary parmesan cheese grater. I’m not entirely sure which one I’d recommend to anyone. Anyone out there have better tools for grating chocolate?
Between everything else we had going on this weekend, I missed getting pictures of the rest of the process. I did take one of my whipped cream & chocolate mixture though. See how it’s almost exactly the same colour & texture as the cake batter? Light, fluffy, and chocolatey!
I ended up leaving out the almonds, after toasting and grinding them, because of a failed experiment. Because I didn’t feel like dirtying the food processor for such a small amount, I decided to try grinding them in the coffee grinder (one used only for spices, never coffee). They turned into almond butter within seconds! I was out of almonds at that point, and we had too much going on for me to run out and get more.
One question for the rest of you heavenly cake bakers: Am I the only person in the world who has a tube pan with a hole too small for any wine bottle? We have 50 bazillion bottles in our house, because we make our own wine, and not a single one will fit into the hole in my tube pan, to suspend it above the counter. Last time I made angel food cake, after rushing around the house looking for something that would fit, I ended up suspending it over a plastic funnel, because by that point it was cool enough that it wasn’t about to melt anything. This time, I just flipped it over onto a cooling rack, but I wish I had something better.
Comments from co-workers:
Anton: Nice and light, I like it… a lot… thank you
Robin: That was very yummy and light 🙂
Adam showed up when there was only one piece left and no plates, took the bottom of my cake carrying case and a fork to his cube and said “Be back in 5”
Comment from hubby:
Jay: The chocolate is bitter. People liked this? Most people don’t like bitter. I like it.
Note to self: Make this again, and again, and again, preferably with better chocolate. Hm. Imagine it with this as some of the chocolate.
eatsndrinks.ca 
No, my angel food cake pan is exactly the same!!! I flipped it over on a cooling rack this time too and discovered that the middle tube is a bit longer than the edges, but I still think it is lame.
A chili chocolate angel food cake sounds excellent.
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Your cake looks great. I’m glad everybody liked it. I haven’t made this cake but I had intended on grinding the chocolate in my food processor instead of grating it.
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Oh, and when I made AFC last summer, I suspended my cake over a bottle of rose water cuz that had a nice slim neck.
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Ah, now I see why everyone else had frozen egg whites, and I had none! I did a small Lemon Luxury Cake and bought the lemon curd, so no spare whites. Mystery solved. Thanks for prodding my memory.
Grating chocolate–I thought my “fine” Microplane got the chocolate too fine, so I didn’t have a tweed effect. I did forget to pull out the little attachment that holds small items for grating, which might have let me bear down harder and get bigger pieces. Or perhaps the larger grater would have been better. The mess seems to be inevitable, at least for my grating.
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I love the comments on your cake. Especially Adam disappearing with the cake into his cube. Hilarious.
Your cake looks grand. When you unlock the secret to the perfect grating of the chocolate, can you let me know? I think Jenn (Knitty Baker may have the answer!).
Also, wow that you make your own wine! Do you make grape wine or fruit wine?
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evilcakelady: Lame, indeed! Looks like we have exactly the same pan — Baker’s Secret or something along those lines. Either that or yet another crappy product from Wilton, purchased before I knew any better.
Hanaâ: Hm. Good point, there may be some bottles from things like vanilla or various flavourings that could work for this.
NancyB: Every time I see your name, I think of a dear friend of my parents (and mine now, too), who is also Nancy B. I love her to bits, so you get positive vibes every time you post. 😉
Nicola: We make it from kits, so it’s always been a grape base, but we sometimes do kits that have a fruit ‘reserve’. So, things like Green Apple Chardonnay or Strawberry Riesling. Those are good summery wines, especially when mixed with club soda. Right now we have a batch of Riesling going, that was given to us by our wine kit supplier when he came to our housewarming party. He even brought us custom labels for it! 🙂
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Lovely – question, did you get your cake base back from Adam…. and did he like it?
🙂
ButterYum
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ButterYum: Got the cake plate back, and it was empty, so I think that was a good sign. 😉 He also wondered if I’d baked it in layers or sliced it to get the three layers for filling, so I explained that process.
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Your cake looks great. It took me a long time to grate the unsweetened chocolate too. If I made this cake again I think I would use a 70% chocolate instead of unsweetened. I thought the unsweetened tasted a little gritty in the nice soft cake.
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your cake looks good! 🙂
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Oh..btw i put my chocolate in the food processor instead of grating it..much faster!
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