The best angel food cake recipe! Made completely from scratch with all-purpose flour! I recommend reading through the recipe and notes and watching the video before beginning.Recipe only slightly modified from Good Housekeeping
strawberries and homemade whipped cream for toppingoptional
Instructions
Preheat oven to 375F (190C).
In a medium sized bowl, whisk together powdered sugar and flour and set aside.
1 ¼ cup powdered sugar, ¾ cup + 2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
In the bowl of a stand mixer (see note ³ for my success tips), combine egg whites, cream of tartar, vanilla and almond extracts and salt. Mix well.
1 ½ cups egg whites², room temperature preferred, 1 ½ teaspoon cream of tartar, 1 ½ teaspoon vanilla extract, ¼ teaspoon almond extract, ¼ teaspoon salt
With mixer on high, beat in sugar, about 1 Tablespoon at a time, adding more only once the previous tablespoon has been dissolved (About every 15 seconds; as you add the sugar, you may be able to hear the faint sound of the granules scraping against the metal bowl. Once you no longer hear this, the sugar has been dissolved). Do NOT scrape the sides of the bowl as you are doing this, just keep beating.
1 cup granulated sugar
Beat until stiff peaks⁴ form; the mixture will be thickened, glossy, and sticky and will greatly have increased in volume.
Using a rubber spatula, gently fold in sugar/flour mix, about ½ cup at a time. Do not over-mix; fold only until the flour mixture is combined with the egg whites mixture.
Spread the mixture evenly into an ungreased 10 inch tube pan and use a knife or spatula to cut through the batter to break through any air bubbles that may exist.
Bake the cake on the center rack of your 375F (190C) for 35 minutes or until the top of the cake springs back when lightly touched. Any cracks on the surface should look dry.
Immediately upon removing from oven, invert the cake onto a bottle or can and allow it to cool completely.
Once cake has cooled, place right-side-up and run a knife inside the rim of the cake pan. Invert cake onto serving platter.
Slice carefully, Angel food cake is delicate so be sure to saw/slice each piece carefully with a serrated knife to avoid smashing it with a dull straight-blade. Serve with strawberries and homemade whipped cream, if desired.
strawberries and homemade whipped cream for topping
Video
Notes
¹If you don't have a stand mixer:
You don’t have to use a KitchenAid/stand mixer, but I do recommend using at least an electric hand mixer (with a large bowl!), as whipping the egg whites by hand will be very difficult, time consuming, and exhausting! It will take much longer to whip egg whites with a hand mixer than with a stand mixer, so have patience!
²Use fresh, not carton, egg whites
Use fresh egg whites and not the kind sold in a carton. Egg whites sold in a carton usually will not whip properly to stiff peaks, so use fresh!
³Bowl for cracking egg whites
You want to be sure that you crack your eggs into a completely grease-free bowl and that there are absolutely NO pieces of yolk in with the whites. My suggestion is to crack each egg in a smaller bowl and then immediately transfer it to your measuring cup; don't crack every egg directly into the measuring cup because if you accidentally get a bit of yolk in the cup near the end that you can't scrape out, you will have to discard all of the whites and start over
⁴Stiff peaks
Stiff peaks exist when you can dip a knife or spatula into the mixture and the peaks that form when you remove the utensil hold their shape firmly without the point of the peak folding or receding back into the mixture at all.
Storing
Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3-5 days. This cake may also be frozen. Cool completely, wrap tightly in plastic wrap, and freeze for up to 3 months.