Cake Lab!

I will update this again with another photo!

Angel Food Cake ( Alton Brown)

Ingredients

1 ¾ cups sugar

¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup cake flour, sifted

12 egg whites (room temperature)

1/3 cup warm water

1 teaspoon orange extract, or extract of your choice

1 ½ teaspoons cream tartar

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. In a food processor, spin sugar about 2 minutes until it is superfine.

3. Sift half the sugar with the salt and cake flour, setting the remaining sugar aside.

4. In a large metal bowl, use a balloon whisk to thoroughly combine egg whites, water, orange extract, and cream of tartar. After two minutes, switch to a hand mixer.

5. Slowly stir in the reserved sugar, beating continuously at medium speed.

6. Once you have achieved medium peaks, sift enough of the flour mixture in to dust the top of foam. Using a spatula, fold in gently. Continue until all the flour mixture in incorporated.

7. Carefully spoon mixture into an ungreased tube pan.

8. Bake for 35 minutes before checking for doneness with a wooden skewer. (When inserted halfway between the inner and outer wall, the skewer should come out dry).

9. Cool upside down on cooling rack for at least 1 hours before removing from pan.
   

I don’t know, maybe it was just me not having Angel Food Cake in forever or my high expectations as a perfectionist or just because I was in a weird mood today, but it was incredible sweet and chewy. It was moist and springy. We followed step by step directions. I just wasn’t a huge fan.

I did like this much more..
Pound Cake, from Joy of Cooking Cookbook

Ingredients

1 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

1 cup sugar

4 or 5 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups sifted cake flour

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

2. Have all ingredients at room temperature.

3. Grease and flour one 9×5-inch loaf pan.

4. Beat butter in a large bowl at medium-high speed for 1 minute.

5. Gradually add sugar and beat until light and fluffy, ~5 to 7 minutes.

6. Add each egg one at a time, beating well after each addition.

7. Add vanilla and beat 1 minute.

8. On low speed, slowly add cake flour, mixing only until thoroughly blended.

9. Scrap the batter into the pan.
10. Bake the cake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 1 hour for a loaf pan.

10. Let loaf cool in pan on a rack for 10 minutes.

I did most of the mixing, ingredients stuff so I couldn’t take more step pictures. It took us until the very end of class to finish baking the pound cake.

We sampled our professor’s Chiffon Cake..

It was very similar to a regular birthday yellow cake, only this was way lighter and fluffier. This “unshortened” cake utilizes oil instead of butter and egg whites similar to angel food.

Here you can see our angel food cake, the chiffon cake and a slice of another groups’ Sponge Cake.

This Sponge Cake…

This cake is a “shortened” cake meaning it has an added fat ( egg yolks) giving it more moisture and yellow color. This particular one wasn’t mixed as well as it could have been, so it tasted a little eggy.