Completed Cake

Mise en Place

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.

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?

Cake Batter

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!

Whipped Cream Frosting

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.