Angel Food Cake - Hints, Tips & Tricks

Angel Food Cake is about to become really popular .. as the first technical challenge on The Great British Bake Off Series 4 we are all going to enjoy watching contestants wrongly greasing the tin and over beating the batter I am sure .. I haven't even seen the show yet (In fact I am writing this 2 days before it is aired) but I have made Angel Food Cake for years and am familiar with what can go wrong ... 

Angel food cake is a lighter than air cake that should melt in the mouth. It is a fatless sponge in a similar vein to a Genoese sponge but has a moister, lighter texture. I find it rather plain on it's own but it comes in to its own with a fruit compote (I love stewed apples with cinnamon) and lashings of double cream. In America it is often referred to as "white cake" and can even be purchased in packet cake form. It is usually baked in a round bundt tin.  The perfect cake tin for angel food cake can be found here , I love Nordicware tins, they are a real lifetime investment. I wonder if there will be a sell out of these after the airing of the show? Luckily I already have my own .. This one is really great as it has it's own little feet - why would a cake tin need feet I hear you ask? Well angel food cake needs to be cooled upside down, you flip over the whole cake so the sponge can "relax down" ... before the days of my bundt "with feet" I used to flip my cake and let it rest on a jam jar, the feet are far more stable though and you are far less likely to come back to a tipped over cake from other members of the family making a cup of tea and knocking your cake over (or in my experience Mothers that think you have done something really strange and turn the cake back over). 

I am not going to write up "my" recipe for angel food cake as it is a pretty standard science. I recipe I always use is here.

But I am going to write up my top tips ... 


1) NEVER grease the pan, never, ever, in a month of Sundays grease the pan. This is because the cake NEEDS to stick to allow it to cool upside down. Not even a sneaky spray of cake release, really, nothing. As for the parchment paper .. leave it in the drawer, no greasing means no lining either. 

2) Cool your cake for as LONG as you can, preferably a couple of hours, or if you can over night. This gives the cake plenty of time to stablise and relax into shape. This will make taking it out of the tin so much nicer and will avoid lumps of cake falling out when you remove it from the tin. 

3) Fold your flour in in as few folds as you can using a metal spoon. You have spent ages beating air into those eggs, you need to keep as much as you can in the batter to make sure the texture is light and fluffy. 

4) Use room temperature eggs, preferably separate your eggs a few hours before you use them (in a similar vein to the French macaroon). 

5) Once your cake is in the tin ready to go into the oven give it one sharp tap on the bottom of the tin, this will "pop" any big air bubbles and give your cake an even texture. Only one though - you got to keep that air safe! 

5) Use a long, bendy sharp knife (I actually use my cold meat carving knife) to help the cake out of the pan, sticking as close to the edge of the pan as you can, be patient with it, but if you have left it to cool for long enough there shouldn't be a huge issue. 



I am now off to sulk because if I had made it through to the final 13 this year I would have NAILED this dammit! It will be very interesting to see if any of my tips would have helped the newest batch of bakers when the first show of the new series is aired this Tuesday, 20th of August on BBC at 8pm. 

Bumbu Bali - THE taste of Bali in a jar.

Another savoury recipe today, (I promise i'll be back to baking alchemy soon!!), but I promise you this is a cracker! I am lucky enough to have been to Bali on my honeymoon. We didn't really know what to expect in regards to food, I had a vague spattering of knowledge about Indonesian food but the Balinese are proud of their roots and despite being officially part of Indonesia they do things there own way. 

 I didn't have a bad meal in Bali, in fact I would go as far to say we didn't even have a mediocre meal, we ate everywhere we could .. road side shacks to the 5 Star food at our hotel.  Our hotel was the Alila Manggis in the quieter East Bali and they are known for their Balinese cooking courses, my budget didn't stretch to a course but that didn't stop me bothering the chef for recipes! He was wonderfully helpful and after a busy service stood with me in the empty restaurant where I eagerly scribbled down recipes on the back of an envelope (Rick Stein style - get me!!). The chef explained the most important ingredient in any Balinese kitchen is the "Bumbu", this is a paste of wonder. It can be used to marinade meat and works wonderfully as a marinade for chicken or lamb for satay,  it is brilliant as a base for spicy soups or stews and most importantly the base of my most favourite food of all time, Babi Kecap - a slow cooked pork in Kecap Manis, a sweet Indonesian soy sauce.  This recipe makes about a jam jar full, it can be kept in the fridge for about 7 days but if you portion it into an ice cube tray it can be frozen and used in portions almost like a spicy little stock cube. Me and my husband have had sort of serious discussions about making this up and selling it at farmers markets. It's THAT good. 

I have changed the recipe slightly to make the ingredients more obtainable to us here in the UK. I think our supermarkets are getting much better (hurrah) but I still couldn't find everything here. 

You will need: 

25g of birds eye chillis

115g shallots 

50g garlic cloves

25g galangal (Thai ginger) A little tip for you, they have started selling fresh galangal in my local Morrisons store. Very impressive! 

30g Ginger 

1.5 tsp of ground turmeric

25g of palm sugar (if you really can't get palm sugar brown sugar will do)

50g of ground almonds

1 stalk of lemongrass

1/2 tablespoon salt 

50ml coconut oil 

2 Bay leaves 

150ml water 

1) Place the chillis (de-seed if you prefer less heat), shallots, garlic, galangal, ginger, palm sugar, tumeric, salt, coconut oil and ground almonds in a food processor (I have this awesome little Ninja that I picked up on QVC it is my desert island kitchen gadget and perfect for this job!). Blend it all together until it reaches a fine paste. 

2) Place this blended mix in a heavy bottomed saucepan and turn on the heat, cook this spicy paste for a couple of minutes (careful not to colour or burn it) and then pour on the water, add the bay leaves. Bruise (smash ..) the lemon grass stalk and add this to the yellow paste of wonder .. it will look like this : 

3) Keep the heat on medium and continue to stir and "cook down" the paste for about 30 minutes, the water will evaporate and you will be left with a thick paste. 

4) Remove the bay leaves and lemon grass stalk and pour the paste into a clean jar or any other convenient container (I really don't recommend plastic though as the turmeric will stain it). 

Your paste is now ready to marinate meat, pot into a spicy soup, knock up some nasi goreng or satay. I have even used it to marinate a couple of pork chops to serve with coconut rice for a quick mid-week meal.