There’s a family gathering. Easter, maybe, or a birthday. It doesn’t really matter; all that matters is that someone has requested angel food cake. Aunt Carol makes a tasty and delicious angel food cake, so she’s responsible for providing it. You will assist her.
Step 1: Under no circumstances do you go to Kroger and buy a cake. That is cheating.
Step 2: Aunt Carol begins with a quiz. What ingredients do you need? You list them.
Cake Flour (It’s sweeter than regular flour, and fluffier, too. You know this because you tasted it once because you wanted to know what the difference was. Now you taste just a little bit because you like it.)
Sugar (In two parts: some with the egg whites, and some with the flour.)
Egg whites (twelve of them. Aunt Carol separates eggs using the shells; she says that using an egg separator is cheating. Once, when you were pressed for time, and she wasn’t there, you cheated. But she’d had you using the shells for so long, that you found yourself incapable of using the separator properly. So now you always use the shells and call the separator a cheat, too.)
Cream of tartar (when you fetch it from the pantry, you see that there’s a small plastic tub of it, or a tiny spice tin. You grab the tin because it’s cuter.)
Vanilla (Aunt Carol uses double strength vanilla extract, not that cheap store brand “imitation vanilla flavor” crap. This means that, technically, you should halve the vanilla for the recipe. You double it when Aunt Carol’s not paying attention.)
Salt (Just a bit. You don’t know what purpose it serves in the cake, you just know that it needs to be in there. You don’t think about this until much later, and when you do, you resolve to ask Aunt Carol about it the next time you bake together, but you always forget.)
Step 3: Preheat the oven. If the oven is not hot, the cake will not bake. This sounds like a stupid step to emphasize, and I know you’re thinking, “What idiot doesn’t think to turn on the oven?” but the answer is…you. You forget to turn on the oven every fricken time. So go preheat the damn oven. Oh, and make sure you check that it’s empty before you do. You don’t want to melt the Christmas cookies again.
Step 4: Beat the egg whites, cream of tartar, salt, vanilla, and some of the sugar until it reaches a stiff peak. Aunt Carol informs you that you’ll know it’s a stiff peak when you dab your finger on the surface, and come away with a tiny white mountain. She says this is her favourite part, because she gets to sample the tasty.
Step 5: Fold in the flour and the rest of the sugar. Aunt Carol will show you how to properly fold in the flour/sugar mixture, because somehow, you still can’t get it quite right. As she does, she’ll proudly tell you that this is why homemade angel food cakes are better than store-bought, because machines can’t fold like people can.
Step 6: Pour the batter into the cake pan. Cut. Angel food cakes are not baked in ordinary cake pans, but instead in pans wherein the bottom and middle can be lifted out from the outside, so it’s easier to get the cake out when it’s done. Once the batter is in the pan, you have to slice through it a few times to make sure it’s distributed evenly, without any big air bubbles in it. At least, you think that’s why you’re supposed to cut the batter. It’s been a long time since Aunt Carol told you, and you’ve pretty much forgotten her answer. But you do remember that you used to want to use a sharp knife for this, because they cut better, even though Aunt Carol insists that a butter knife will do just fine.
Step 7: Bake. You’ll know it’s done when you can touch the top and nothing disastrous happens. You can’t actually remember what the real tip is here, which is probably why your cakes never turn out as good as Aunt Carol’s.
Step 8: Let cool over a beer. Seriously. And I don’t mean leave it on the counter and have a drink with your mates while you wait for the cake to be edible. I mean, turn the pan upside down, and perch it on top of a bottle of beer. It’s better if the bottle is empty or room temperature, because if it’s cold, the hot pan will shatter the bottle, and your cake will sit in a pool of booze, and that’s not tasty at all. Trust me. Oh, and hope that the cake doesn’t fall apart. Aunt Carol’s never had a problem with this, but you have a history of having the top fall off the cake while it cools.
Step 9: Eat. Some like to top it with sliced strawberries or cool whip, but you just like to grab a chunk and munch on it while you wander around talking to your family.
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