What is Angel Food Cake?

Angel food cake is a type of sponge cake where no butter or oil is used. It's made up of egg whites, flour and sugar and a stabilizer, cream of tartar. It's quite similar to a chiffon cake, in that they are both extremely light and airy, however, a chiffon cake uses egg yolks and oil too.

What is the pan used to bake an Angel Food Cake?

For best results, you should use what is called a tube pan. You can get them with and without 'legs'. Go for the pan with legs.

It's far easier as you will see from the recipe, after baking, you need to invert the pan when it is cooling, and keep it off the work top so air can circulate and gravity will naturally loosen the cake from the pan. We got our tube pan from Amazon, and they come in various sizes, some non stick and some regular. We used a 10 inch regular tube pan with legs, as you can see in the photo below.

You don't need to pay extra for non stick. For this recipe, you don't grease the pan, and the cake will rise sky high! Greasing will inhibit the rise and affect the structure of the cake during baking.

What is Cream of Tartar?

We've mentioned this cake is incredibly light and fluffy, super airy and cloud like! It's all about the structure of the cake. When using egg whites, this causes the aeration when whipped up. In order to stabilize the egg whites, i.e stop the whipped structure from collapsing during baking, we use cream of tartar. It's a white powder, comes in sachets or a small tub, and found in the baking section of the store. We would not recommend leaving this ingredient out. You want the cake to keep it's rise and lightness.

You can use cream of tartar for most meringue recipes and also some cookies too, such as snickerdoodles.

Prep Time

20 minutes

Cook Time

40 minutes

Serves

10 - 12

Equipment

10 inch / 25 cm angel food cake / chiffon pan

Ingredients

The Cake

4½oz or 125 g all-purpose / plain flour
10½oz or 300 g superfine / caster sugar (divided)
10 large egg whites
1 large lemon zest only
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp cream of tartar
½ tsp salt

The frosting

20 fl oz or 600 ml double/heavy cream
3 Tablespoons Lemon Curd
12- 14 Fresh strawberries

If you make your own lemon curd using our easy recipe, you will be able to use up some of the leftover egg yolks.

• Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4 (fan 160C) and have your oven shelf on the lower part of the oven. Remove any shelves above as the cake will rise quite a lot during baking.
• Sift the flour into a bowl and add 100 g or 3 & ½ oz of the sugar. Give it a mix with a spoon so it's all combined, and make sure there aren't any lumps in the sugar from storage.
• In a mixer, add the egg whites and mix on high speed until frothy.
• Add the lemon zest, lemon juice, salt, and cream of tartar. Continue to mix at high speed until you see soft peaks form.

Whilst still whisking, gradually add the rest of the sugar slowly bit by bit, and continue to whisk until the mixture becomes firm, but don't over-mix so it is absolutely stiff.

• Add ⅓ of the flour to the egg white mixture and using a spatula, gently fold it in until just combined.

Add the remaining flour in 2 more batches, folding gently each time so as to keep as much air as possible in the batter.

• Transfer to the baking pan, take a round-bladed knife and just run through the batter to try to remove any air bubbles.

• When done, transfer to a work surface right away and turn the pan upside down so it is standing on its legs.

• Take a knife and run it around the inner and outer sides of the pan to release the cake and place it on a cooling rack to finish cooling.

Then run a knife under the base to release that too.

Whilst you're waiting for the cake to cool, slice half of the strawberries and cut the other half into halves.

Make the frosting.
Whip the cream until stiff,

add the lemon curd and fold in until just combined. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Once the cake has completely cooled, take a sharp knife and slice through the center so you have 2 halves of the cake.

Lay one piece of cake on a serving plate

and add ⅓ of the lemon whipped cream. Smooth so it's nice and even.

Then add the sliced strawberries.

Place the other half of the cake on top

and add the remaining whipped cream. Spread on the side and top of the cake and inside the hole where the pan tube was.

Arrange the strawberries on the top and drizzle some lemon curd over the top. Keep refrigerated until ready to serve.

NOTES

1. Do not grease your baking pan. If you do, this will inhibit the rise of the cake.
2. You can buy cartons of just egg whites in the chilled section of the store. As a rough guide, 1 Tablespoon equals one egg white. Always check the packaging in case they have a different equivalent.
3. Cream of tartar is used to stabilize the egg whips when they're being whipped. This will help with the structure of the cake. You need to use this, so make sure you don't leave it out!