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Angel Food Cake with Ginger Accents
From Dorothy McNett's recipes at www.dorothymcnett.com. This takes a typical angel food cake (food for the angels in the house) and adds some devilish accents of ginger! Very delicious indeed!
1 cup all purpose unbleached flour
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 tablespoon powdered ginger
1 1/2 cups egg whites (takes about 10 - 12 eggs)
1 1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste
1 cup raw sugar
for the glaze:
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
2 - 3 teaspoons water or lemon juice, or white wine or sherry
2 - 3 tablespoons candied crystalline ginger, cut into small pieces
Make sure you have the proper "angel food pan" and that it is very clean with no oily residue. Do not grease or flour the pan, just set it aside for now. Make sure the oven racks are positioned so that the cake can be placed on a rack just one level below the middle of the oven and no rack above it. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Measure the flour and powdered sugar and place in a bowl, whisking in the powdered ginger. Whisk together very well and set this aside. Separate the eggs, making sure you do not get any of the egg yolk into any of the egg whites! Put the egg whites in a large bowl. (Save the yolks for another use or discard them.) Using an electric beater, beat the whites until foamy and then beat in the cream of tartar and salt and continue beating until soft peaks form. Gradually beat in the vanilla and the sugar to form a stiff meringue. Now remove the beater and using a silicone or rubber spatula gently fold in the flour mixture. Gently scoop / push the batter into the cake pan, do not swirl or bang the batter around, just gently pile it in and softly spread out the top. Do not break up those air bubbles! Bake 40 - 45 minutes or until top springs back when gently touched and it is nicely browned. remove from oven, invert the pan onto its feet and let it hang upside down until cool. Then gently remove the cake from the pan, using a thin spatula or knife as needed to release it from the edges.
For the glaze, using a food processor with the steel chopping blade in place whirl the powdered sugar and the water or juice, adding enough liquid just to get a nice dripping consistency. Pour over the cool cake and let it drizzle down the sides as much as possible. Garnish with the candied ginger, slice and serve!
Recipe created 2015-10-05.
