Angel Food Cake - Part 2

Last month, I mentioned my plan to introduce my Aussie friends to "Angel Food Cake". I'd planned to do it right away, but somehow managed to procrastinate until this week - but I finally did it.

I am part of a group of women who meet one afternoon a week to play mahjong. They are a great bunch of gals and fairly adventurous, so I decided they were the ideal ones to try this out on.

I got a Duncan Hines angel food cake mix from an American food store here in Melbourne - and located an angel food cake pan via eBay. The cake mix turned out to be amazingly easy - certainly easier than attempting this from "scratch". Everything needed (including the eggs) was part of the mix; all I had to do was add water. I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical that the cake would turn out correctly - but it did!

The cake pan is non-stick, so I had to be extremely careful in how I loosened the cake from the sides. My plastic spatula worked well for out outer edge, and the cake came away from the sides easily.

The inner tube part was trickier - I used a butter knife for that (and managed to get the job done without scratching the pan).









Worrying that the cake would adhere to the pan's bottom, I lined it with wax paper before pouring in the batter. It's a good thing I did; I'm convinced the cake would never have come out easily, esp. after seeing how it was clinging to the sides.


Voila!



It turned out perfectly. The texture, colour, flavour - all if it was exactly what angel food cake should be. And what did my friends think of their first taste of angel food? Well here's the unanimous verdict:

(the ladies, from left to right are Joan, Phyllis, Jill, Jenny, Dianne, and June.
In front are Jill's grandchildren, Caitlin and Thomas, who came home from school just in time to be offered a slice)
They were pretty surprised at how tall the layer was, and by the texture, which they compared to sandwich bread. Most of them remarked on how sweet it was - which surprised me, as I don't think of angel food cake as being particularly sweet. I don't eat cake often (almost never, really) so I'll have to get some the next time I'm out for a coffee and make note of how sweet it is.

Anyway - angel food cake is a hit in Australia!