This week’s selection with the Heavenly Cake Bakers group is angel food cake “any way you like it”. Rose provides a recipe for a single egg white, telling you that it will scale up to 1 egg white per cup of pan capacity. Since I always seem to have a stash of egg whites in the freezer, I decided to base the size of my cake on how many egg whites I needed to use up. I had about 300 grams worth, so I multiplied the base by 10. For my version, I decided to add a few spices and see how it tasted as a spice cake.

I started by mixing about 1/2 tsp of cinnamon, 1/2 tsp of ginger, 1/4 tsp of allspice, and a few gratings of nutmeg (I’d say I used < 1/4 of a nutmeg ‘nut’) in with the flour, sugar and salt. The rest of the mise en place was basically the rest of the recipe scaled up. I did also add a tiny splash of almond extract (in with the vanilla), but you couldn’t really detect it.

Mise en Place

Angel food cakes are pretty standard — beat the egg whites, add the sugar, beat in the vanilla, then fold in the flour. Rose’s recipe includes cream of tartar and lemon juice, which are added when the eggs are foamy, then you beat until the soft peak stage.

Soft peaks

Once the eggs reach that point, gradually add the sugar, and continue beating until stiff peaks form.

Stiff peaks, with sugar beaten in

Next, fold in the flour mixture.

Folding in the flour mixture

Does anyone else cringe the whole time they’re folding in the flour, listening to all those tiny bubbles popping?

Anyway… spread the batter in the pan, and smooth it out.

Ready for the oven

After cooling upside-down on a rack (I don’t have any bottles small enough to fit the tube of my pan over), I flipped it back right-side up to unmold. For some reason, it had collapse on one side.

Unmolding

It looked alright after flipping it back around on the plate, and it certainly didn’t harm the taste or texture.

Mmm...

Personally, I liked the addition of the spices. I think if I do this again, I’d probably bump up the spice level a bit with a little more cinnamon and ginger, to give it some kick. The spices cut the sweetness a tiny bit. Jay didn’t seem to really care for the spices, but he’s not a pumpkin pie fan either, so I guess this combination just isn’t up his alley. Oh well, more for me. Speaking of which, excuse me while I go fetch myself a piece.

Cupcake!

This week, the heavenly cake bakers had “free choice” week. We’re each picking a recipe (some have done more than one) that has already been made during this bake-through, either one that Marie made before the rest of the group joined in, or one that has already been made by the group. I chose the very first recipe that Marie blogged about. You can see her post here. This is one of the three recipes she was allowed to post, so if you want to try it out, check out her post. My husband loves both spice cake (his favourite prior to this was my Mom’s recipe) and peanut butter, so when I saw this cake, I knew I had to make it. Yes, I’m lazy and it’s taken me this long to follow through on that.

Before I get too far into this, let me preface it by saying I’m watching the Olympic Ice Dance Free skate, so forgive me if I seem distracted. Go Tessa and Scott! I saw them win at Skate Canada here in the fall when my Mom and my sister were here visiting for the competition, and became a fan. I haven’t watched much figure skating it recent years (more or less since the time of Bourne and Kraatz, really), so being able to see it online is a treat.

Mise en Place

This cake follow’s Rose’s standard method for butter cakes, by mixing the dry ingredients with the butter and some of the liquid, then mixing in the eggs, vanilla and the rest of the liquid in two additions. The thing I found most interesting about this spice cake is the use of cocoa as a spice. The cake just has a teaspoon and a half of cocoa, so you don’t get a noticeable chocolate flavour, but I’m sure you’d notice if it was missing. If nothing else it adds colour. The thing I did find a bit odd is the inclusion of buttermilk, but no baking soda. Can anyone explain that? I thought you were usually supposed to balance acidic ingredients with baking soda. The only thing I miss about The Cake Bible versus Rose’s Heavenly Cakes is the lack of an “Understanding” section with each recipe.

Regardless, the batter mixes up beautifully like always.

I love my beater blade!

I’m not very good at distributing cupcake batter evenly, even using a disher (admittedly, my disher’s just slightly too small for this purpose), so my sizes are really uneven. Oh well!

All different sizes

I didn’t take any pictures of making the icing — dump it all together in the food processor. I think I might be inclined to try this in the stand mixer next time, because I can’t really see what the food processor adds, and I hate washing it.

Frosted!

I can’t find my huge piping tip anywhere, but that was probably a good thing because I’m not sure I would have had enough frosting to go around had I used it, but the smaller star tip did a pretty job, I think.

The verdict: Jay saw me packing them up off the baking rack, and said “What are you doing?” “Putting these away so I can put them in the fridge.” “You’re not taking those to work.” “Of course not, sweetie.” He wants to know if someone who’s never baked a cake in his life would be able to make them, because he wants to send the recipe to his brother. Good thing I’ve left my old smaller Kitchen Aid stand mixer with him for safekeeping.