Angel Food Cake and Pain de Genes

Happy Monday???  Uuugghhh, not so much on this end. :( Todays class was on par with how the rest of my life has been lately; a big hot mess! :)  Let's start with waking up, shall we?  Yea, it didn't happen.  If it wasn't for my little baby niece knocking on my door, I wouldn't have made it to class. And yes, I was late. Booo! First time for everything right? :)  To top it off I have this sinus, head cold kind of thing going on where my head weighs more than a bowling ball! Anyone else need a vacation??? :) :)

It gets better :).  In class, a little more chaos. We had no solid direction, no demo's, not enough pans, too much batter, forgot to put ingredients into one of our cakes, got stuck at the dish pit washing 100 pans and finally, FINALLY I made it "home". 

On that note, today we have Angel Food Cake!  In the picture above, the Angel food cake is the small one at the left hand corner and the one on the right hand corner with the whipped cream and fruit added onto it.

Here is the recipe if you so choose to make it ;)

Ingredients:

16 oz EGG WHITES

.15 oz CREAM OF TARTAR

.06 oz SALT

8 oz SUGAR

.15 oz VANILLA EXTRACT

.08 oz ALMOND EXTRACT

8 oz SUGAR

6 oz CAKE FLOUR

Lets get the positivity rolling and get you started!  The break in the recipe means those two ingredients will go in separately.  Sift those two (Sugar and Cake Flour) together twice over and place them aside. Those will get folded into the batter later.

Whip your egg whites on high speed in your mixture, using your whip attachment. Combine the Cream of tartar, salt and sugar in a container, making sure to break up the lumps in the cream of tartar. :)  You don't want those chunks in your batter that later tastes horrific when you bite into your finished product. ;) Yucky.

Take your mixture down to low speed and gradually add in the Cream of Tartar mixture. Add this in little by little and not all at once.  Whip the mixture to a medium peak, add in your extracts and then whip on high for a few more seconds to incorporate in your flavors. 

Remove your bowl from the mixer and start to fold in your flour and sugar mixture.  You want to add it to the whipped eggs in thirds, always folding after each addition. As soon as it is all in there, you want to immediately put these into your Angel Food Cake pans and straight into the oven at 350 degrees F.  Once the cake is ready, take out and place on your cooling rack upside down, so that the cake does not deflate.

You are all done! You can decorate this any way you wish. You can make a glaze and place it on top, as I did in the small Angel Food cake in my picture.  You can add some whipped cream to the top and decorate it with all kinds of yummy fruits. It's all up to you!

We also made the Almond Pound Cake today, the Pain de Genes, but in all the chaos, we forgot to put the melted butter in at the end. :( It lacks a little moisture but it still tastes pretty good.  In the picture, its the cake that has the almonds on top with the strawberries surrounding it. :)  If you are interested in this cake, please let me know and I will put the recipe up for you!

I hope everyone has a beautiful evening. I am off to get ready for my nephew's graduation. I can not believe he is graduating from High School today. He also made the Orlando Gold Volleyball team last week, which is a major accomplishment!  I am a truly proud auntie. He is an amazing kid, or as I say, E-mazing!! :) He laughs at it, but its caught on and everyone keeps saying it now. :) :)

See you here tomorrow. Oh yea, no quiz today either, no time. You gotta love it! Maybe tomorrow?!?! Who knows.....