Angel Food Cupcakes

I have mentioned before (about a hundred times) that I have a hankering for meringues, egg whites and angel food.  Angel Food would be the only birthday cake for me, and I talk about it often, like here, and here. Angel Food is unlike many other cakes out there, because there isn't much you can do to change the way it's done.  As you can see from my posts, I want it done just like my Mom made it, with Seven Minute Icing.

Cute paper liners...

So, on Mother's Day, I decided I was going to make it into cupcakes, and what a great idea that was!  Portion control!  You can make your angel food cake any way you like, scratch, box, whatever, I do not judge.  I used to sell Duncan Hines cake mixes, and although I would like to never use a box mix for a layer cake, I am not above a box for angel food.  I hate wasting anything, and what the heck would I do with 12+ egg yolks?  This time I used the Target brand angel food cake mix, and dang, it was delicious!  Yes, I am a food blogger, but hey, sometimes I like the easy way out, especially after a week of hours of cookie decorating!

They baked perfectly!

Nice craggy angel food tops!

I used some adorable cupcake liners I won from Sweetopia eons ago, but because of their delicate color, I was waiting for white cake to put in them.  They are head and shoulders above regular cupcake liners.  Heavy and firm, made of Swedish grease proof paper, I would like more!  You can find them at Vestilhouse.us.com mine are called Elisabeth.  A box of angel food mix will make 24 cupcakes (exactly the number of liners in the Vestil box) with plenty of bowl licking goodness left.  Here is the icing recipe I usually use, straight out of the Joy of Cooking.  And yes, many would call it "meringue" icing, but I am old school, and seven minute it will always be!  The recipe says you can do it with a rotary beater...wouldn't that be fun?!

Joy of Cooking Seven Minute Icing

2 unbeaten egg whites (free of any trace of yolk)
1 1/2 cups sugar
5 Tablespoons cold water
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Place all ingredients except vanilla in a double boiler over rapidly boiling water.  Beat with rotary beater or whisk for 7 minutes.  I use a hand mixer, I hate to wear myself out in the kitchen!  Remove from heat and add vanilla and beat until it is the consistency for spreading.  You can color it here, or add nuts etc.

It's perfect every time.

BUT, I also have done this recipe from Epicurious.  It uses less sugar and another egg white and more vanilla, so I went with this one.

Epicurious Seven Minute Frosting

1 cup + 2 Tablespoons sugar
3 egg whites
1/3 cup water
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon vanilla

Beat all ingredients except vanilla in double boiler over barely simmering water.  Starting low, beat, increasing to high, until stiff peaks form, for about 5 minutes.  Whoa!  Hang on here, this is 7-minute frosting not 5!  Just get it to peaks, regardless of the time!  Remove from heat and continue beating until it is light and billowy (they suggest 2 minutes so the math works out), add vanilla.

Perfect, delicate cupcakes!

There Will Be Cakes

My favorite holiday has come and gone. The 4th of July brings back terrific childhood memories. Summer days floating in black innertubes on Lake Delavan. Fireworks at the school "in town". Sparklers by the box and the parents with the familiar warnings, and the black snakes that we would light and watch shrivel over the pavement. I don't remember any specific food, but we had "lake food" all summer that we were there. Boiled hot dogs, home made bratwurst on the beach, ice cream sandwiches and drumsticks dripping all over our swimsuits. And then 2 days later...my birthday!

What I remember NOT having was coolers of water, soda and Gatorades, boxes of packaged snacks, bowls of candy laying around. How is it that we didn't die of thirst without cases of water on ice? And soda was never in the fridge. We would sometimes beg to go into the Log Cabin (a bar) and get a Coke on tap in the frosted plastic cup with the pastel striped straw. The straws would adorn our sand castles. If we were hungry throughout the day, we never complained about it. Frankly, my mom and Aunts couldn't get us out of the water.

The local grocery store was called Sentry. After a little Google, I found it is still there. New owners, and I couldn't find the Lake Delavan cake on the site. It is the cake my mom and aunts would buy, chocolate, white icing and the sides were covered in chocolate jimmies. I don't remember loving this cake, I remember it as a fixture of my summer at the lake. So, as the birthdays approached, mine and Christina's, I thought I might reproduce this cake.

Christina requests chocolate cake every year. No exception. I prefer and angel food cake, as you may know if you read about my birthday last year. So it was two cakes this year. Hers and mine. Devil and Angel. I went to my favorite website, epicurious.com and perused recipes. Why would I bother with the 500 cookbooks I own? Jeez. I am far too dependent on my Mac. So here are the results.

Chocolate Lake Delavan Cake

Angel Food

I opted for a seven minute icing on the angel food, tinted purple (Christina's request). The cakes were a hit! Delicious! Another year passed...Happy Baking!

Happy Birthday To Me!

Yes, I am well aware my birthday has come and gone. I share my special day with Christina, and this year she was away at Senior Retreat, Nic was in Colorado and so it was Scott and I. We had ice cream cake early to celebrate Christina's birthday, but an ice cream cake doesn't qualify for my birthday cake. So I baked my own cake, then got caught up in the day, and ended up freezing it, and never even got a taste or a glob of frosting on it. Now I have had flourless chocolate cakes, ganaches, vanilla bean genoise, I have baked or tasted it all. So what do I want when I want cake? The humble angel food cake with sticky frosting. Straight from my childhood.

Many years ago, I sold Duncan Hines Cake Mix. Proudly the only layer cake mix on the market at that time without beef tallow (a nice name for cow fat) or lard (that would be pig fat). Blech! Duncan Hines taught me to be a label reader. Nowadays, the trans fat cops do a lot of the work for you. Also back in the old days, Duncan Hines made a two-step angel food cake mix, and it was divine. But no, the American housewife felt like two steps was a step too many. So the new and improved mix hit the market and the little old ladies were, quite frankly, a little pissed. At least in Iowa. The new mix didn't really taste home made to them, I wouldn't know. But alas, even I would agree it is a LOT easier than home made. I love egg whites, I love beating them into glossy peaks, baking the meringue, folding them in batters, but I have never baked an angel food cake from scratch. Sue me. There are some things I shortcut, not many. Maybe on that day when I have a dozen eggs begging for a job to do, I'll whip one up, maybe someday soon. But on my birthday, time was of the essence and I made a Duncan Hines Angel Food Cake, and still didn't have time to frost or eat it.

So on this brutally hot August day, my belly declared it was tired of all the raw veggies and vinegar I seem to be eating so much of. I need a sugar fix. So I defrosted the cake and made Seven Minute Icing . Honestly, I could put this stuff on rice cakes. I could eat the entire fluffy bowl of goodness. So I piled it on to high heaven. Plugged up the hole in the middle of the cake, and plopped a candle for the lonely little birthday that came and went. Don't be feeling sorry for me. You should be very jealous. This is heavenly!