Today conquered (halfway) a cake. My (not really because I’m not married to my boyfriend) nephew turned three yesterday. My (not really for the aforementioned reason) sister made a beautiful cake that sat on one of those pretty round cake holder-upper things. Anyway, upon seeing this creation I became immediately jealous and decided I could do that too. Commence an evening with Scott that was hormonal before and after a trip to my local and expensive Paul’s Market for oddities such as cake flour, cream of tartar, and egg whites. Turns out that angel food cake is meringue based, and that is the easy part. I called my mother several times as I happened upon weird details.
A tube pan? Yeah, that’s the weird cake pan your mother owns that has a whole in the middle but isn’t rounded like a bunt cake. Don’t have one of those. So I decided to go to bed and think about it in the morning.
Nine hours later…
As I pulled my owl apron over my head and pressed play on Scott’s ITunes, I was excited and ready for whatever came out of my oven. The beating of the eggs with tar-tar for encouragement went really well. Things looked like they should. Then the words “Don’t underbeat” glared at me for a good ten minutes. How was I supposed to know if my meringue was firm but smooth? I did what any college graduate would do: asked someone else and went with what they said to prevent self-fault.
Scott said it looked good. So, I began folding in my sugar mixture. Folding isn’t as hard as it sounds. Think stirring with no frenzy whatsoever.
Mom warned me to not fill my not-a-fucking-tube-pan very full because the rising of angel food cake is XTREME. (Not an actual quote but true to the impact.) So I split my already-halved batter into halves and baked that fluffy beaten and folded whiteness into submission.
So it burned… But only slightly and only in one corner!
And talk about the skinniest cake you’ve ever seen. SRSLY. One-fourth the thickness of a normal round cake is just awkward. The upside? You eat about twenty-five percent the amount you normally would. I recommend it for those monitoring the sugar intake. For the recipe I used, just ask Betty Crocker. She’s probably as irritating as my grandma is sometimes, but wow she knows stuff about the kitchen.
Oh! I almost forgot the best part: FROSTING. My frosting was extra awesome. I combined 1 large jar of marshmallow cream with one box of cream cheese and dashes of lime juice to taste. Food coloring suggested for the adventurous. If you’re like me, I would urge you to just make the frosting and eat it with graham crackers. YUMMY.
