Angel Food Cake

It has been a trying weekend, even with the bank holiday break to look forward to. Unfortunately I got struck down by a nasty and rapidly developing cold which then, inevitably, got passed onto my 7 month old baby girl. Had a birthday cake finish baking and decorating, the party for said cake to attend and a BBQ to host over the bank holiday, as well as fighting off the cold myself and helping the bubba through hers. With all this going on the baking and blog suffered, but I managed to redeem myself and make one yesterday, the Angel Food cake.

This is a recipe I have wanted to do for a while but was waiting to find a ring tin. I finally got one but then went away to see my family and left it at home so knew I would be making it sooner rather than later. It was a short recipe and so was also perfect to ease me into the blog and baking again after being under the weather and meant I could bake it once the little one had gone down for the night too.

This recipe differs from a usual sponge, in that there is not butter or milk as ingredients but plenty, in fact 10, egg whites instead. Had to whip those into a frenzy until the formed soft peaks, which took a good 10 minutes and resulted in an aching arm again. Then I switched from my beloved electric handheld whisk and used a good old wooden spoon to fold in the dry ingredients. Used my fail safe technique yet again and greased the ring tin with butter then dusted with flour and poured the mixture in and into the oven it went. 

Again this recipe differs from the usual ones in the time it took to cook. This cake took 50 minutes, which is the longest one I have baked so far. Guess this is down to the difference of ingredients. Once it was cooked and cooled I dusted it with icing sugar as suggested although this did absorb into the sponge so would couldn't actually see that I had attempted to decorate it.

Since I baked it in the evening, by the time it had cooked and cooled it was late and so we didn't get to taste this one until today. I waited for Hubby to come home and we tried it together after dinner. The sponge was very springy, even when cutting it and wasn't crumbly like a normal sponge. The texture in the mouth was unusual, you could taste the lemon and almond in the sponge and it left a nice after taste too. Even so I have to admit that this wasn't one of my favourites. It was down the to texture of the sponge, wondering if the egg whites were whipped enough (any advice would be great) or if it is just how the cake is meant to be. Hubby liked it but 

agreed the texture was unusual too.