For Easter I decided to make a nice coconut lemon Angel food cake for after dinner. The recipe was from the I Am Baker blog (link at the end) and while it technically is only for a coconut angel food cake I decided to add some lemon zest to try and make it a little brighter.
I’ve made angel food cake once before and so I knew how it’s supposed to go but I was a little worried about everything going right. It’s not an uncommon worry I’ve had when working with egg whites before and likely a worry I will have no matter how long I bake. The first thing I did was scrub both the angel food cake pan and the mixing bowl, then made sure to rinse both as well as possible to make sure no soap residue messed with the egg whites whipping up.
Next was the general assembly process which was pretty standard – whip egg whites with half the required sugar, cream of tartar and flavoring until it has reached stiff peaks. Then carefully fold in the cake flour and remaining sugar, so that the egg whites don’t deflate but the flour is incorporated. Things did get a little messy there as there was so much egg whites It completely filled the mixing bowl right to the brim, but it was managable enough so long as I was careful with the spatula. After carefully spooning the batter around the pan I placed it in the oven and let it bake for about an hour and fifteen minutes. It baked a little longer because of how pale the cake was, I was worried it hadn’t properly baked. After letting it rest upside down on a baking rack I then used an offset spaula to unstick the cake from the sides of the pan, then flipped it upside down and un-stuck the cake from the bottom of the pan as well.
On the day of Easter we all had a slice, and the cake was definitely worth the work! The cake was airy, light, and gently flavored with coconut. The lemon wasn’t very strong but there was just enough of it that you could tell the difference from a cake with just a coconut flavoring. The recipe suggested using a coconut whipped cream with the cake, which ended up being served on the side rather than frosted on the cake due to not getting to the whipped cream in time to actually put the frosting on the cake. Even if only on the side I really liked the combination of cake and cream. The whipped cream was light and not to sweet, while still bringing out just a little more of the coconut flavor.
All in all if you like coconut or angel food cake this is definitley a cake recipe I would recommend!
iambaker.net/coconut-cake/
