Not angel food cake either

I have learned that the second attempt is too early to start winging it for angel food cake. My success with my first method of ridding myself of my leftover egg whites (pretty much this recipe, but using Splenda, sans frosting and paired with a mexican chocolate ice cream) made me overconfident. I did my usual thing of mixing and matching various bits of different recipes, but I hadn't adjusted the instructions properly to match the ingredient list, but I figured I could handle it. Unfortunately, those egg whites just refused to stabilize into a meringue. It's possible that there was a bit of egg yolk in there and I was doomed from the start, but I think it's likely because I mixed all the sugar in with the flour so didn't have any to add to the whites. The sugar adds structure and stability to meringues, right? And possibly I added the cream of tartar too early. I'm pretty sure I shouldn't have made a slurry out of it and the lemon juice. How does cream of tartar react to acid? Not well, I think.

I could hear the bubbles fizzing out of the egg whites while I was folding in the flour, but I rushed it into the oven and hoped for the best. Here's the results:


Better than I expected, actually. It turns out that a fallen angel food cake is hard to distinguish from a low-fat sponge cake. As you can see in the picture, it browned up nicely too. The key to making it an actual success, rather than just a passable failure, was adding a glaze. Just powdered sugar, lemon juice and a bit of zest, mix, let sit to thicken and pour over the cake (after punching it full of little holes to help it soak in).

OK, enough failed dishes. The next post will be a successful ice cream and then we'll see how that guava sorbet turns out.