How to Make Angel Food Cake For People That Hate Baking and/or Following Recipes

Angel Food Cake With Lemon Custard Topping (I used the spare yolks left over from the cake to make the lemon bar filling from this NYT recipe)

My biggest flaw? Authority issues. I hate being told what to do to an unreasonable bracket that extends all the way to following recipes. This is embarrassing. I’m working on it. And one of the main ways I’m fighting this childish behavior is by learning to bake.

I hate to break it to you but following instructions can lead to really delicious things. For example: this recipe, which seems difficult on paper, but in truth, only uses seven ingredients and is simple enough that I can pull it off from memory stoned.

I am going to teach you how to make a perfect angel food cake from scratch, and while it does require your attention, take heart in knowing that even me—a woman who would rather be chewing her own leg meat under a bridge than reporting to middle management—has been able to submit to order enough to have her cake and eat it too.

I am hoping this type of “recipe” will help people who are inherently bad at baking (and/or following instructions) to achieve this amazing dessert on the first attempt.

I do suggest you read (or listen) to all of this at least once before trying. Because if you’re anything like me you’ll give the ingredients a cursory glance, vaguely compute the ratios, throw it all together in a bowl, mix it up, and bake it at 350° till “done” and all you’ll get from that anarchy is a really sad pudding burned to the side of your ruined cake pan. Darling, you have to do things in order.

This recipe requires some inexpensive tools, like a special pan and a hand-mixer, but if you raise chickens it’s worth the investment because a cloud-like slice of angel food cake is the BEST and it uses up a dozen eggs a shot if your birds are extra fruitful, so add it to your homemaking arsenal.

If you’re already great at baking I hope this is entertaining as hell. I will be giving additional explanations and yip yapping in the audio track if you’re looking for extra “tips” and “tricks” and by that I mean hear all the ways I have ruined cake.

Also, if you’re reading this far into the preview of this recipe, did you know every time I post a paid essay with a free preview like this you can also listen to that same amount of free audio?! IT IS TRUE. CLICK IT!

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Ingredients & Supplies

This could have been cake.

Weird/Non-Edible Things you Absolutely Need To Make This Cake:

1. Cream of Tartar - Available at most grocery stores

2. Electric Hand Mixer - With high-speed setting for whipping egg whites

3. Angel Food Cake Pan - Yes you need it. You can’t use another pan. You can’t use that bundt pan. You can’t use a cake pan. You can only use this dumb pan. Trust me and save yourself the impending tears and horrors.

4. Smoothie Blender or “Food Processor Type Thing”

5. An Oven that can heat to 330°F

6. Large Mixing Bowl

7. Soft Spatula (For scraping batter) & Measuring Cups/Spoons

Normal Edible Things you Absolutely Need To Make This Cake:

1. A Dozen Eggs

2. 1 cup (and one level table spoon extra) of Cake or White flour*

3. 1 3/4 cup Sugar

4. 1/2 tsp Salt

5. 1 1/2 tsp Vanilla Flavor/Extract

Bonus: 1 Lemon & 2 cups powdered sugar for Glaze, if you're nasty.

*Cake flour is a better option if you can get some. It’s available in my town’s only small grocery store and my town has more stop signs on one street than homosexuals so your local Kroger’s got this. If you aren’t getting cake flour and using OG plain, you need to really blend that all purpose flour up or accept a denser cake, still great but less cloud. Think rain cloud.

Just add more whipped cream, it’s fine.

Note: I am not a real baker. I am someone who is sharing her adaptation of several online recipes that worked best with my own hen’s eggs, my budget, and my oven. Feel free to use whatever works best for you. But I find this process ends up with an angel food cake if that’s our shared goal.

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How To Pull This Off

Before you begin, preheat your oven to 330°

Set out your bowls, measuring stuff, get your food chopper set up, pray, light candle on mantle next to grandma, thank your house wights, accept failure with gusto. Try regardless. This is life.