Chocolate Angel Food Cake

The generous dusting of icing sugar means you can't see the gridlines where the cake stuck to the cooling rack, okay?

What do you do when you have eight egg whites in the fridge left over from making the marvellous crack pie and you've got no almond meal and don't want a pavlova? Apparently, my options were narrowed down to angel food cake and chocolate angel food cake. I chose to try this chocolate angel food cake from epicurious.

I ignored the part of the recipe talking about fruit and maple yoghurt and just made the cake. Goodness only knows what I'm going to do with a cake I didn't really feel like but made because I didn't want to waste 8 egg whites. Actually, I'm probably going to take it to work and feed it to my workmates. Not even probably, that's definitely what I will be doing.

The cake was incredibly easy to make. Whisk the eggs, lemon juice and vanilla until soft peaks form, add sugar, beat some more, add the dry ingredients, fold through, bake. Easy!

I have to say I'm not a fan of the texture, it seems a little rubbery, for lack of a better word. I think it's not really at its best served by itself either. I'm contemplating whether to make some ganache to top it with. I think some richness will go quite well with it. Or possible the fruit and maple yoghurt.


Chocolate Angel Food Cake
adapated from epicurious.com

1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup plain flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
10 egg whites (or 1 1/2 cups prepackaged egg whites)
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Transfer the oven rack to the lowest level. Preheat oven to 165°C. Sift 1 cup sugar with flour, cocoa, and salt; set aside. Using an electric mixer set at medium-high speed, whip egg whites, lemon juice, and vanilla in a medium-sized bowl until peaks form. Set mixer to high speed and whip in remaining 1/2 cup sugar until semistiff peaks form (do not overbeat). With a plastic spatula, slowly fold in the remaining dry ingredients, 1/4 cup at a time, until flour mix disappears. Scoop batter into a 10" ungreased tube pan and spread evenly. Bake until cake springs back when touched, 45 to 55 minutes. Remove from oven, invert cake pan, and place upside down on a cooling rack.