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Weetabix
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Recipe: Angel Food Cake
If you can, i highly recommend watching the corresponding episode of "Good Eats", entitled "Let Them Eat Foam". Angel food cakes can be tricky, but Alton Brown does a great job of explaining why each ingredient is essential, and how the angel food cake is built. I'm a visual learner, so watching an expert tackle it first made me a lot more confident!
I've made this recipe three times before. Twice with vanilla extract, and once with imitation strawberry extract. This time i'm using a combination of imitation strawberry and banana extracts.
The first time i tried my hand at this, it came out PERFECTLY. The second and third times were not as impressive. I agonized over the recipe for awhile and decided that i must not have been putting enough of the dry ingredients in the egg batter (The recipe is a little vague about the dry ingredients. Fold most of the flour, sugar, and salt mixture into the batter.), as i'm quite good at whipping up medium peaks.
I decided to give this recipe one more shot, and if i fail this time, i'll find another angel food cake recipe.
The second step in the recipe requires whipping the egg whites, warm water, cream of tartar, sugar, and extract to medium peaks. When the egg whites start to stiffen up and can hold a little bit of shape, and you can see tracers following the beaters, you know you're close. This is what medium peaks look like. Sorry for the dark photo. 
Another sign that the batter is the right consistency. When you spoon it into the pan it shouldn't level out. If it keeps its form, it's probably right. To level it out before baking, just put the pan on a flat surface with your hands at 9:00 and 3:00 on the edges, and quickly (but gently!) swish the pan back and forth 90 degrees or so. Pretend you're a DJ and you're scratching records on a turntable. I hope that's an alright explanation.
When you're baking an angel food cake, it's important to treat it very delicately. In effect, the batter is nothing more than a catacombs of egg whites, air, and sugar, with the flour mixed in to give it the texture of a cake. So, if you handle it too roughly, you'll break the bubbles and the cake will fall flat. This means no jumping around in the kitchen at any point between separating the eggs and serving the cake!
It's also very important to let the cake cool upside-down for at least an hour before removing it from the pan. Those bubbles need the stability of that center spike for awhile after you take it from the oven.
The moment of truth. It's time to take it out of the pan. It didn't fall in while it was cooling, so that's a good sign! Since you don't grease an angel food cake pan, slice between the pan and the cake with a sharp knife (i use a serrated bread kife). Separate the cake from the bottom section of the 2-part pan the same way.
Gorgeous! I'm going to let it cool overnight before slicing into it, but if it tastes half as good as it looks i will consider it a success!
I'll post photos of the tasting in the morning. And hopefully there will be an audio clip to add to this soon!
