Angel Food Cake

Along with most of the country, I've been very excited by the arrival of the Great British Bake Off 2013 back on our screens. I've decided to try my hand at the technical challenges so each week I'll be searching out the recipes and giving them ago if at all practical. Week 1 we saw the cake week, this series the technical bake was Mary Berry's Angel Food Cake. One of my friends helpfully emailed me the recipe for this while I was waiting for it to go online. Thank you. You can now find the recipe here. 

This cake is different because it has no fat. Most of the structure comes from egg whites which have been well whisked and hold all of the air. I used my mixer for this, it's the first time I've used the balloon whisk attachments as I've never had enough mixture. This recipe called for 10 egg whites so I was delighted that this was certainly enough. The mixer worked really well and I got lovely peaks very quickly.

Whisked Egg Whites

The recipe calls for a slight whisking and then adding lemon, cream of tartar and some salt. I've never used cream of tartar but on reading the packet I could see why it was used. It helps the whites hold their structure and increases volume. The caster sugar is then added spoon by spoon. The final step is to fold in the flour, carefully, maintaining all the air in the egg whites. 

Flour Folded in

I didn't have the correct tin this time so I used a standard 8" tin. I carefully spooned all the mixture into this. It reached the rim of the tin so I hoped it wouldn't rise too much!! The cake rose the perfect amount just about holding inside the tin. 

Just about fits in the tin!!

Once cooked I turned my tin upside down and left it on a cooling rack. Since I wasn't using the right tin I didn't have the proper feet and my cake was right over the rim but it seemed to be ok, I think. 

Upside Down Cake

The recipe also calls for making lemon curd, with all the left over egg yolks. So I quickly whipped up a batch of this. It's very easy and just requires placing all the ingredients over a low heat and stirring until it's thickened. 

Making the Lemon Curd

Once cool I covered the cake in whipped up cream and drizzled some lemon curd onto it which had some passionfruit seeds stirred in. 

Ready to Eat

The verdict: I really enjoyed this cake, it was lovely and light and the lemon was so refreshing and cut through perfectly. I'm not sure what the passionfruit added and next time I'd omit these. This is a cake that I'd happily eat more slices of and probably will before it heads off to Gary's work tomorrow. Certainly a cake I'd love to make again and would try other fruity flavours. I would also like to try it in the proper tin. I didn't feel there was anything wrong with the bake this time but I'd like to compare and do it properly. Difficult to know what it should look like but I think it compared to those on GBBO, possibly a little squashed due to using the wrong tin upside down. I'd give this 9/10, that extra mark could be gained by removing the passionfruit and trying with the proper tin.