sugar and cake flour mixture into the beaten egg whites. Then fold in the vanilla and maple syrup.
Spoon the batter into an ungreased 9- or 10-inch tube pan or 6 miniature ones. Smooth the top with the back of the spoon. Bake until light golden brown, 30 to 35 minutes. Cool by hanging the cake (in the pan) upside down around the neck of a bottle until it cools to room temperature. Run a long, sharp knife blade around the cake to loosen it, then knock the cake out onto a plate. The outside crumb of the cake will remain in the pan, exposing the white cake underneath.
To make the icing, stir the syrup and confectionersâ sugar together until smooth, adding more maple syrup if necessary. Pour over the top of the cake and spread with a spatula, letting the glaze trickle down the sides. Let set for at least 30 minutes, or until the icing is hard, before serving. Slice with a serrated knife, using a sawing motion.
A Note on Baking Ingredients Cake flour is different from all-purpose flour. It is ground from specific grains to a specific fineness by people who know all about baking. Using such a flour for cakes will increase your chances of successfully producing the quality of cake we know as angel food. Cream of tartar, as a substance that causes leavening, must be fresh.
A Note on Using the Real Thing: Pure Vanilla and Pure Maple Syrup Nowadays grocery stores are more apt to carry imitation vanilla extract made with artificially produced flavoring. The pancake syrup in supermarkets is often made of corn syrup and natural and artificial flavors.
Vanilla beans are obtained from vanilla orchids, which grow in Central America, Madagascar, and wild on the islands of Oceania. Vanilla beans must be cured and then tightly closed up so they will âsweat.â Itâs an expensive process, but the result is so good.
Pure maple syrup is made from the sap of North American sugar maple trees and it takes 30 to 50 gallons of the sap to produce 1 gallon of the syrup. So it, too, is precious. And there is nothing quite like it.
You deserve to use the real thing for your Windsor Angel Food Cake.
T HE ATTRIBUTES YOU DEVELOP AS A GOOD COOK WILL SERVE YOU IN THE rest of your life. Every meal is a new beginning, and requires a different level of planning, organization, judgment, and skill. The French have a term that many cooks are familiar with, mise en place, which is a fancy way of saying: make sure you have a place for everything and that everything is in its place before you begin.
Cooking demands discipline, focus, attention to detail, and determination. Though I believe that they might occur to me if I were in their immediate presence, the names of the brave men who assisted in the cooking and distribution of the meal, and of the Marine Guard who stood sentinel on the beach that day twenty years ago at the Port of Aden, largely escape my recollection. Yet I remember most every element, texture, measurement, and technical preparation of the food, point for point. I think this might be true of many of the men and women in my profession, primarily because we are an obsessively detailoriented lot, and as a matter of tradecraft and daily practice, narrowly and almost pathologically focused on the task at hand. Sherlock Holmes, another Englishman with a highly specialized profession, once made the point to Dr. Watson that he tried to forget most of the information he ran across in daily life that didnât pertain directly to his work, and I heartily agree. Aside from matters that attend directly to my family (Iâm still pretty good at birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays), I try not to concentrate on matters that donât relate to my trade, such as politics, sport, entertainment, and stamp collecting. Iâd be a lousy Jeopardy! contestant, but I am a good cook.
It is an awesome responsibility to be the cook. Ask anyone who has cooked for their children. When someone allows you to cook for them, they entrust you with
Spoon the batter into an ungreased 9- or 10-inch tube pan or 6 miniature ones. Smooth the top with the back of the spoon. Bake until light golden brown, 30 to 35 minutes. Cool by hanging the cake (in the pan) upside down around the neck of a bottle until it cools to room temperature. Run a long, sharp knife blade around the cake to loosen it, then knock the cake out onto a plate. The outside crumb of the cake will remain in the pan, exposing the white cake underneath.
To make the icing, stir the syrup and confectionersâ sugar together until smooth, adding more maple syrup if necessary. Pour over the top of the cake and spread with a spatula, letting the glaze trickle down the sides. Let set for at least 30 minutes, or until the icing is hard, before serving. Slice with a serrated knife, using a sawing motion.
A Note on Baking Ingredients Cake flour is different from all-purpose flour. It is ground from specific grains to a specific fineness by people who know all about baking. Using such a flour for cakes will increase your chances of successfully producing the quality of cake we know as angel food. Cream of tartar, as a substance that causes leavening, must be fresh.
A Note on Using the Real Thing: Pure Vanilla and Pure Maple Syrup Nowadays grocery stores are more apt to carry imitation vanilla extract made with artificially produced flavoring. The pancake syrup in supermarkets is often made of corn syrup and natural and artificial flavors.
Vanilla beans are obtained from vanilla orchids, which grow in Central America, Madagascar, and wild on the islands of Oceania. Vanilla beans must be cured and then tightly closed up so they will âsweat.â Itâs an expensive process, but the result is so good.
Pure maple syrup is made from the sap of North American sugar maple trees and it takes 30 to 50 gallons of the sap to produce 1 gallon of the syrup. So it, too, is precious. And there is nothing quite like it.
You deserve to use the real thing for your Windsor Angel Food Cake.
T HE ATTRIBUTES YOU DEVELOP AS A GOOD COOK WILL SERVE YOU IN THE rest of your life. Every meal is a new beginning, and requires a different level of planning, organization, judgment, and skill. The French have a term that many cooks are familiar with, mise en place, which is a fancy way of saying: make sure you have a place for everything and that everything is in its place before you begin.
Cooking demands discipline, focus, attention to detail, and determination. Though I believe that they might occur to me if I were in their immediate presence, the names of the brave men who assisted in the cooking and distribution of the meal, and of the Marine Guard who stood sentinel on the beach that day twenty years ago at the Port of Aden, largely escape my recollection. Yet I remember most every element, texture, measurement, and technical preparation of the food, point for point. I think this might be true of many of the men and women in my profession, primarily because we are an obsessively detailoriented lot, and as a matter of tradecraft and daily practice, narrowly and almost pathologically focused on the task at hand. Sherlock Holmes, another Englishman with a highly specialized profession, once made the point to Dr. Watson that he tried to forget most of the information he ran across in daily life that didnât pertain directly to his work, and I heartily agree. Aside from matters that attend directly to my family (Iâm still pretty good at birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays), I try not to concentrate on matters that donât relate to my trade, such as politics, sport, entertainment, and stamp collecting. Iâd be a lousy Jeopardy! contestant, but I am a good cook.
It is an awesome responsibility to be the cook. Ask anyone who has cooked for their children. When someone allows you to cook for them, they entrust you with
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