For Frédéric's birthday, I decided to make him an angel food cake. After thirty minutes of beating egg whites, I called him to ask how long it should take for the egg whites to form stiff peaks. (Remember, he is normally the cook and baker, not me. His birthday is the one day a year that he gets a break. At least on making the cake.) He said, "Um, ten or fifteen minutes?" I laughed at him.
After an hour, I wondered if I should give up and just see what happened if I made the cake with soupy egg whites. Yet I persevered. After an hour and a half, I thought I could see the consistency changing a bit, maybe these eggs weren't going to let me down after all! After almost two hours, I finally obtained this:
Not *quite* stiff peaks, but close enough. Keep in mind this was done with our mixer, whose directions instruct us to not use it continuously for more than two or three minutes. Happily, the two hours of beating don't appear to have burned the motor out.
I also don't have a Bundt pan. (Note to self: Pick up a Bundt pan on the next trip home.) But I do have a pan with a hole in the middle, making the cake look more like a giant donut than anything else, especially once I added the glaze.
But with strawberries added as decoration, it almost looks like a real cake!
At any rate, it tasted like a real cake! Happy birthday, Frédéric! The boys and I got him a Tintin comic book he didn't already have as his present.
1 comment:
The cake looks yummy! Who wouldn't want a giant doughnut as a birthday cake, though? haha.
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