Angel Food Cake

Ah, this most finicky of cakes. My first attempt tasted fine but was, texture-wise, a disaster. So I grabbed a friend, who had made them before with her mother, and we tried again.

Success! Not 100%, but pretty close. My big mistakes the first time around were in not understanding how delicately the batter must be handled.

1) I hadn't whipped the egg whites long enough. Alton's recipe says "medium peaks" - what you really want are stiff peaks. AKA as much air as you can get in the egg whites without breaking them.

2) The flour MUST be sifted first, and the additions of the flour mixture to the whipped egg whites must also be sifted in. Old 50s cookbooks talked about sifting all the time - a step that is largely absent from modern baking instructions. You can't skip it here, though. [Full disclosure: I don't have a sifter, so I used a tea ball. I bet a fine-mesh strainer would also work.]

3) When sifting the flour mixture into the egg white mixture, don't add too much at a time, and fold it in *gently*.

4) Bake the cake until the top is REALLY golden brown. On attempt #2, we took it out just a little too soon, and lost about an inch of volume due to some collapsing. Another 5 minutes in the oven halted any further collapse, but we did lose some fluffiness with that mistake. Be careful checking doneness with a wooden skewer, as apparently even this step can lead to losing volume.

5) Cool the cake - for an hour minimum - upside-down. The first time around, I just flipped the cake pan upside down on a cooking rack - that only worked because the cake had about half the desired volume. The second time, we balanced the cake upside down with the central piece on a can, although apparently you can also put the upside down cake on a full wine bottle to hold it while it cools.

So, after driving yourself nuts with the paranoia - you are done! Enjoy with fresh fruit! I think the next attempt will be even better, as I have a much better idea now of what to do.