Chocolate Angel Food Cake

Yesterday my coworker asked me, "You haven't been baking lately.  Is it too hot to bake these days?"  He's half right and half wrong.  The right part is, it's been so hot these days, humidex reached up to 43C during the day.  They said there's even a shade index.  If someone is under the sun with no shade, temperature can reach up to 50C.  It's hard to relate Toronto with this kind of temperature. Weather is changing everywhere, global warming is definitely a factor.

One thing that doesn't change is, that I'm still baking whenever I can find the time.  This  is also the half which my coworker was wrong. I finally saved enough eggs whites for my Chocolate Angel Food Cake.  When I brought this to the office this morning, everybody said happily, "You baked!"

The recipe was adapted from Recipezaar.  However, since most western recipes are sweeter than what I like, I reduced the sugar by 1/3.  It's sweet enough for me.  If you want to further reduce the sugar, take off 1/4 cup of sugar from the flour mixture.  Do not remove sugar from the amount used for beating the whites.  Egg whites need the sugar to reach stiff peak faster.

Ingredients

• 2/3 cup sifted cake flour (not self-rising)


• 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa


• 1 cup granulated sugar, divided


• 12 large egg whites, at room temperature


• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract


• 1 1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar


• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions

1 Heat oven to 375 degrees.

2 Sift flour, cocoa and 1/2 cup granulated sugar together; set aside.

3 Beat egg whites at low speed in a large mixer bowl until foamy, about 5 minutes.

4 Add vanilla, cream of tartar and salt.

5 Gradually increase speed to medium while beating in remaining 1/2 cup granulated sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, 5 minutes.

6 When sugar is incorporated, continue beating to stiff peaks, 2 minutes more.

7 Sift one third of dry ingredients over whites; gently fold in with rubber spatula.

8 Repeat process 2 more times.

9 Pour batter into ungreased 10-inch tube pan.

10 Cut through batter to remove air pockets.

11 Bake 35 to 40 minutes, until top springs back when gently pressed.

12 Invert and hang pan on neck of bottle to cool.

13 To unmold, run a thin knife around side of pan and tube; invert pan.

14 Turn cake upright onto serving plate.

It's very important to use a knife to cut through the batter after pouring it in the tube pan.  Otherwise there will be large holes in the cake.

End product should be soft like marshmallow, and it is!  The cake was gone within 15 mins!

Finally after 3 days of heat wave, the temperature cooled down. It's 27C and we call it cool!  When I took the kids home after dinner, Livie suddenly called out, "Mommy look!  The sky is so beautiful!"  I looked through the window.  Wow, she is right!