Angel Food Cake

My birthday was last Wednesday. Since Sophie has denied me the opportunity to gorge myself on cheese and chocolate like I wanted to, we had to make alternate plans. I'm not a huge cake person, but I do like angel food cake, and we found a great dairy free/soy free recipe.

This cake was awesome--it's like mainlining sugar and egg whites. Just looking at it screams "Sugar!" LOL.

As it turns out, this cake is essentially meringue with a little extra flour and sugar added in, so as you can imagine, the texture is a bit different from normal angel food cake but good--moist, light, fluffy and slightly sticky. The recipe is below, in case you'd like to try it :)

Angel Food Cake (from the Canadian Living Cookbook)

1 cup sifted cake flour
1.5 cups sugar
1.5 cups egg whites (about 12) at room temp
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla

1. Sift together flour and ¾ cup of the sugar. Set aside.
2. In large mixing bowl, beat egg whites until foamy; add lemon juice, cream of tartar and salt.
3. Beat until soft peaks form. Gradually add remaining sugar, 2 T at a time, beating until mixture is very stiff and glossy.
4. Sift flour mixture over egg whites in 4 batches, carefully folding in each batch until well blended.
5. Fold in vanilla.
6. Pour into ungreased 10-inch tube pan and run a spatula through the mixture to eliminate any large air pockets.
7. Bake in 350° F oven for 40-45 minutes or until cake springs back when lightly touched. Turn pan upside down and let cake hang until cool.
8. Remove from pan and frost with your favourite glaze or frosting, if desired.

Now, we had trouble removing it from our bundt cake pan, but did get it out mostly intact. Still, you may want to try lightly greasing and flouring the pan first.

Enjoy!