Tag Archives: angel food cake

April 30, 2013 · 8:00 am

Angel Food Whoopie Pies

My mommy loves angel food cake. For the past couple years I have made something angel-food-cake related for her birthday. See here and here for past posts.

This year I used my heart whoppie pie pan to make little love cakes.

I used the same recipe as last year for the frosting, but switched it up to make it strawberry flavored. Aaaaand I kind of over-whipped it so it turned out more like a strawberry whipped cream and less like strawberry marshmallow.

Angel Food Whoopie Pies

I used a boxed cake mix. It’s too easy, all you have to add is water. I prepared the batter according to the box directions, then used a medium cookie scoop to dollop batter into each well of my whoopie pie pan.

I tapped it on the counter a few times and jiggled it side to side until it settled into the lumps of the hearts.

Bake at 375* for 10 minutes.

I didn’t want them to fall too much, so once I took it out of the oven I turned the pan upside-down on top of a couple drink glasses. Probably not necessary, but it couldn’t hurt.

Once the pan was cool, I used a butter knife to carefully cut around the edge of each heart. Once the edges were free, they were pretty easy to pop out. Lay bottoms up on a cooling rack until ready to frost.

Strawberry Whipped Frosting – adapted from this frosting recipe

Ingredients:

Some fresh strawberries ( I used about a basket, but it made a lot so I probably only needed a few)

1 cup granulated sugar

about 5 tbsp water

1/4 tsp cream of tartar

2 egg whites

1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Clean, hull, and cut up the strawberries, then puree. I used a manual food processor to pulse them as much as possible. I guess you could blend them, but I didn’t mind a little bit of chunks, it was going to get strained anyway.

2. Cook the strawberry puree in a small pot on low heat for about 30 minutes. I just wanted to reduce it a little… I could have cooked it longer, but I probably could have also skipped this step. I like to think it made a difference so just play along with me. 🙂

3. Once the strawberry goop cooled down a bit, I poured it through a strainer to get rid of the big chunks that were still left. Then I poured some into a measuring cup about 1/2 way up to the 1/3 cup mark. This clearly isn’t exact science here… a little more or a little less won’t hurt anything. Pour any remaining goop into a small jar to store in the fridge for later use. (I’m thinking ice cream topping!!)

4. Add enough water to bring it to 1/3 cup and pour back into the small pot. Add the granulated sugar and cream of tartar, and cook on medium heat until sugar is dissolved and the mixture is bubbly.

5. While the syrup is cooking, whip egg whites and vanilla to soft peaks. (Use the whisk attachment if using a stand mixer.)

6. When syrup is bubbly, slowly add to egg whites while mixer is running. Whip for about 7-10 minutes or until stiff peaks form. If you err on the side of less stiff, it will be more of a marshmallow texture. If you over whip (like I did) it will be closer to a whipped cream texture. Either would pair well with these!

OH! and I also added a tad of hot pink coloring because it wasn’t pink enough from just the strawberries for my liking. 🙂

7. Put whipped frosting into a piping bag with a large tip (star or round would work fine). Squeeze onto one side of the whoopie pies and top with the other side. If you opted for the softer more marshmallowy texture for the frosting, let it sit for about 30 seconds before you top it with the other piece of whoopie pie. You don’t want to squish your frosting too much.

These were YUMMY. Because angel food cake is typically tall and fluffy, the shortness of these whoopie pies made them a little denser and stickier. It was almost like taking a piece of angel food cake and squishing it up before biting into it. 🙂

The strawberry frosting was subtle. Next time I would add even more strawberry. I was just nervous about messing with the liquids in this recipe too much.

I only made about a dozen of these as whoopie pies (the rest were just regular cupcakes). It was kind of a pain because angel food cake has to stick to the pan to rise, so I had to cut every single one out of the pan, then wash the pan before I could bake the next batch. It was worth it for a couple batches because they came out so cute! Besides, they were for my mommy. 🙂

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Filed under Cakes

Tagged as angel food cake, pink, strawberry

May 1, 2012 · 8:00 am

Angel Food Cupcakes

My mommy’s birthday was last week and her favorite is angel food cake. Last year’s was a fun twist, but I wanted to do something different this time.

I don’t own a tube pan for baking angel food cake, so I had to get creative. I also had to do some research on angel food. Let’s learn a bit, shall we?

Angel food cake is mostly made of egg whites, which makes it uber light and fluffy. The tube pan ensures that the cake is heated equally from all sides at the same rate. The tube pan cannot be non-stick, as the cake needs to be able to cling to the sides as it rises. After it is baked, it has to be cooled upside down, or else the cake will collapse in on itself and the cake will not be as light and fluffy as possible. The cake has to be cut from the sides of the pan to be released, so a bundt pan cannot be used as it will be nearly impossible to remove from the pan.

Okay all details aside, I decided to try and make cupcakes. I was going to go paperless and then try to dry the cupcakes upside down… but when I got home and looked at the angel food cake mix (ahem, Betty Crocker) there was a cupcake recipe right on the side of the box! So I made them like regular cupcakes, and yes they did collapse a little, but they were still light and tasted amazing.

For the frosting I wanted something light (exnay on the uttercreambay) but I didn’t really want to do whipped cream because (don’t hate me) I don’t like whipped cream… So I decided to revisit this marshamllow frosting recipe I made a while back for these chocolate cupcakes.

It was the perfect light fluffy texture to go with the light fluffy cupcake. Top it with a couple pieces of strawberry and they were perfect!

Mom approved!

3 Comments

Filed under Cakes

Tagged as angel food cake, marshmallows, strawberry

April 30, 2011 · 3:08 pm

Fresh Strawberry Angel Cake

I decided to make my mom a (late) birthday cake. Her birthday fell on Easter this year and with everything going on I didn’t have the time to make her anything, so better late than never!

I will admit, I bought the angel food cake. They are like $4 at the grocery store so I didn’t want to spend all the time making it myself. I cut it in half horizontally so that I could slip a layer of strawberries in the middle.

Filling recipe:

2 cups chopped fresh strawberries

3 tbsp pureed fresh strawberries

Then I put the lid on and made fresh strawberry butter cream (YUM!)

I had some trouble with the butter cream… needless to say, it’s pretty heavy for an angel food cake. I hadn’t really thought that one through. My problem was when it came to frosting the outside where the filling is. I put quite a tall pile of filling in there, so there was a wide section to frost with just strawberries. They started coming out a little and getting stuck in my frosting. I ended up putting half of the butter cream in a ziploc and piping a flat blob across the filling section and smoothing it upwards to “stick” it to the cake part. Here is the finished frosted product:

I started getting low on butter cream as I was trying to figure out how to frost the inside of the angel food cake.. so I just kinda blobbed it in as best I could. Didn’t have enough frosting to make it all the way down to the bottom but no one will notice, right? 🙂

I started cleaning up and forgot to put the cake straight in the fridge. I started drooping a little on the sides so I fixed it up quick and stuck it in the fridge to harden up.

When I decided a few weeks back that I wanted to make a strawberry butter cream, I started looking online for recipes and didn’t really find anything that suited what I was looking to do… So I used my own vanilla buttercream recipe and adapted it a bit. Here is what I ended up with:

1 stick butter, softened

1 16oz box powdered sugar

3 tbsp + 1 tsp fresh strawberry puree

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp milk

I just mix everything together at once, and probably a little longer than I should. It’s easier to frost the cake when the butter cream is a little airy and “whipped.”

Let me tell you – this butter cream is AMAZING. I will be bringing the cake to my mom in a little bit and we won’t eat it until later. I will try to get a pic of it cut to put in here later with an update on how good it tastes all together!

**Strawberry disclaimer: by fresh I mean I drove out to the strawberry fields and bought strawberries that were picked this morning! Being in N. California I am spoiled and have easy access to the best strawberries! I mean look how red they are!

UPDATE-

The cake was amazing, of course. I love the buttercream, I will definitely be using this recipe again! I probably won’t use it on angel food cake though, it was very sweet, and I’m not a huge fan of super super sweet or super super rich things. Here is the inside of the cake photo, as promised: