Angel food cake or angel cake is a type of sponge cake made with egg whites, sugar, and flour, and without oil, baking powder, and various other ingredients common in cakes. It is made in a process of whipping egg whites to a foam, beating in sugar, and folding in flour and more sugar. After baking in a pan with a tube in its center, the cake is hung upside down until cool. The final cake has a slightly chewy texture and white interior.
Apart from the three basic ingredients, salt and vanilla often feature, as does cream of tartar, which lends stability, a softer crumb, and a lighter color. In more complex preparations, inclusions and flavorings such as chocolate, spices, and citrus flavors are added. Angel food cake is often served with a sauce or glaze.
Angel food cake originated in the United States in the 19th century. Gaining popularity and its name in the 1870s, angel food cakes developed over the next century. By the 1930s, the technique of folding in half the sugar had become standard, and less air was incorporated into eggs. From that decade, angel food cake variants with flavors including maraschino cherries, peppermint, and crushed canned pineapple began to be produced.
Ingredients
Angel food cake is a light sponge cake, a rare American dessert with few ingredients.[1][2] In a simple angel food cake, egg whites, sugar, and flour are combined in a 3:3:1 ratio along with salt, cream of tartar, and a flavoring (typically vanilla).[3][4][5] Ingredients common in cakes such as egg yolks, baking powder, butter, and inclusions such as nuts and chocolate are excluded.[1][2] Some bakers use powdered sugar over granulated, saying angel food cakes produced with more fine sugars have a more tender crumb.[6][a] More complex angel food cake preparations may include flavorings such as spices, citrus flavors and chocolate.[5]
Fresh egg whites, cream of tartar, and pastry flour give angel food cake a soft crumb, with cream of tartar adding lightness.[2][4] Using fresh egg whites over those a few days old also impacts the final cake's crumb density, producing a tighter final product.[4] The ultimate characteristics, however, of angel food cakes produced with these ingredients vary. Among manufacturers producing the cake on an industrial level, this can be undesirable and some use monocalcium phosphate monohydrate (MCP) in place of cream of tartar for more consistent output.[7]
Preparation
In a basic preparation, room temperature egg whites are whisked until foamy[8][9] and then stabilized with cream of tartar.[4][8] Continuing to whisk, sugar is added one spoonful at a time until the mixture forms soft peaks and the egg whites can hold no more sugar.[8] Remaining sugar is sifted into flour, and the two are folded into the egg mixture. Among bakers, this step is responsible for a perception that angel food cake is a difficult cake, as overmixing here will collapse the air worked into the batter.[8][9] This is not the only process by which the batter can lose its air; flavorings based on essential oils can cause collapse,[10] as can oil-contamination of bowls or utensils, as warned against by many recipe writers.[11]
The cake is baked in an ungreased tube pan, which facilitates heat transfer and prevents cake movement along the sides of the container during baking.[9][12] Before and during baking, bakers take precautions to avoid cake collapse. Avoiding whisking egg whites and sugar to stiff peaks is one of these, as working in as much air as a batter can hold means that as bubbles expand in the hot oven, egg protein chains can break apart.[8][13] Placing batter in the cold oven before heating it up is another technique used by some bakers, as the bubbles expand more slowly, allowing the proteins more time to set.[4] In the latter stages of baking and into cooling, the cake shrinks slightly. By including cream of tartar, such shrinkage is minimized.[11]
After baking, angel food cake is hung upside down for several hours until cool,[9][14] placed to allow air to flow over the cake's surface.[15] Angel food cake tins are designed to facilitate this, featuring small feet that protrude from the top of the pan.[16] Through hanging, the shape of air bubbles is preserved, and the cake's stretched interior takes on a lighter appearance.[14][4] Hanging the cake upside down generally does not pose problems for bakers, although in kitchens below 68°F (20°C), cooling angel food cakes can contract and fall from their pan before they have completely set.[10] Other factors of preparation impact how the final cake will turn out. Cakes cooked at lower altitudes are less fragile, but have a tender crumb.[4]
An angel food cake with various toppings and frosting
The resulting cake has a white interior, partly due to the inclusion of cream of tartar[4] and a slightly chewy texture.[17] In some servings, it is glazed, iced, or served with a sauce.[2] The dish's reference to angels has given it a special association in some communities. Among African Americans, the cake is often served at funeral receptions, with the idea that the deceased person is now living in Heaven among the angels. Among the Pennsylvania Dutch, it is considered a wedding cake, and the couple is said to be blessed by angels.[18]
History
The origins of angel food cake, and the omission of yolks are the subject of popular lore. According to such lore, it is said that frugal Pennsylvania Dutch cooks created angel food cake in an effort to avoid wasting egg whites left over from making noodles.[2]
Early
Early advertisement for angel's food cake recipes
Sponge cakes originated in Europe in the 1600s, but it was not until 1839 with the publication of Lettice Bryan's The Kentucky Housewife that an American version emerged. Unlike its European counterpart, Bryan's "White Sponge" lacked egg yolks, gaining a soft texture from a high sugar content, and maintaining its shape with the citric acid of lemon and orange juice whisked through a meringue.[1]
White sponge gained popularity in the 1860s and 1870s after the 1864 publication of The Practical Cook Book, which removed ingredients until only sugar, flour, and egg whites remained. On top of this basic recipe, cooks sometimes added flavor and stability with almond extract and cream of tartar.[1] According to the food historian Stephen Schmidt writing in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, the creation of these new cakes with greater volume and lighter consistency are where the modern angel food cake became distinct from the earlier white sponge.[19] Sponges gained further popularity in this period after 1870 when the rotary egg beater was invented, reducing the effort and time involved in making sponge cakes.[12]
Sources differ on how cookbook authors had used "angel's food" as a descriptor to this point. Food writer Stella Parks writes that it was used to characterize sweet dishes as having a wholesome quality, the phrase derived from a use in the 16th century Book of Common Prayer referencing the biblical manna.[1] Schmidt writes that desserts labeled "angel food" were frozen mousses made from egg whites and whipped cream, and other, similar dishes.[20] The first use of "angels' food" to reference the cake identified by Parks came in 1878 in the cookbook The Home Messenger, published in Detroit, Michigan.[1][21] In 1884, a recipe was published by Mary Johnson Bailey Lincoln in her Boston Cook Book, after which the cake gained wide popularity.[2][4] The appearance of angel food cake in cookbooks of the northern US represented an inversion of recipes for the white sponge, which had been the domain of southern cookbooks.[20] The cake's appearance came in some of the last years of American cake cookery before the mass uptake of baking powder.[2]
20th and 21st centuries
Daffodil cake
By the 1930s, through the work of researchers, preparation methods had changed. No longer were egg whites whisked to stiff peaks after it was found incorporating less air produced more tender and moist cakes, and instead of trying to whisk all the sugar into egg whites, recipes changed to fold half of it in with the flour.[9] Recipes appeared in cookbooks, including those targeting African-American audiences,[22] and variants rolled out, the earliest being chocolate, prune, and maraschino cherry, later followed by cakes including peppermint, butterscotch, spices, and chocolate chips. Despite these developments, the mechanics of what was happening on a chemical and molecular level in preparation were not understood, and over the next few decades scientists undertook research into the cakes.[4][9] By 1962, the angel food cake had been so intently researched cookbook illustrator Marion Rombauer Becker was compelled to assert that "laboratory research" had "become so elaborate as to intimidate the housewife."[9]
Other variants that came about in the 1930s included the daffodil cake, named for the streaks of yellow running through the classic angel food cake. Emerging in the Great Depression, it offered cooks a way of using extra egg yolks. Layer cake versions of the angel food cake divided with whipped-cream gelatin fillings also arrived, made to be eaten at parties.[9] The following decade, the American food corporation General Mills began to promote the chiffon cake, understood by consumers to be more accessible to those who struggled to make angel food cakes. Simultaneously, angel food party cakes evolved, moving the whipped cream to a hollowed out cavity and a coating for the exterior, and in the following decades swapping the interior filling for ice cream or a maraschino cherry-marshmallow-nut spread, sometimes extended with coconut and crushed, canned pineapple.[23][24]
By the turn of the 21st century, angel food cakes remained popular, in large part due to their low-fat content. Filled, party versions continued to be made, now more often filled with strawberries and chocolate Bavarian cream.[23]
Castella, Krystina (2012). World of Cake: 150 Recipes for Sweet Traditions from Cultures Near and Far. Storey Publishing. ISBN978-1-603-42446-2.
Fehribach, Paul (2023). Midwestern Food: A Chef's Guide to the Surprising History of a Great American Cuisine, with More Than 100 Tasty Recipes. University of Chicago Press. ISBN978-0-226-81949-5.
Figoni, Paula (2011). How Baking Works: Exploring the Fundamentals of Baking Science. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN978-0-470-39267-6.
Patent, Greg (2002). Baking in America: Traditional and Contemporary Favorites From the Past 200 Yeares. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN0-618-04831-6.
Smith, Andrew F., ed. (2013). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America (2nded.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0-19-973496-2.
Schmidt, Stephen (2013a). "Cake: Overview". In Smith (2013).
Schmidt, Stephen (2013b). "Cake: Angel Food Cake". In Smith (2013).
Stewart, Isabella Graham Duffield; Sill, Sally B.; Duffield, Mary B. (1878). The Home Messenger Book of Tested Receipts. Home messenger receipt book. Detroit: E.B. Smith & Company, Detroit.
Suas, Michel (2009). Advanced Bread and Pastry: A Professional Approach. Clifton Park, New York: Delamar Cengage Group. ISBN978-1-4180-1169-7.
Foegeding, E Allen; Luck, P J; Davis, J P (2006). "Factors determining the physical properties of protein foams". Food Hydrocolloids. 20. doi:10.1016/j.foodhyd.2005.03.014.
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