Angel Food Cake

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Has anyone experimented with substituting dextrose for some of the table sugar? Overall sugar content would be the same, but the cake would be less sickly-sweet.

 

Try it and report.

[paulraphael]

I don't have any plans to bake a big cake anytime soon. I'm just curious since my mom always made angel food cakes for our birthdays. I'm nostalgic for them, but they'd appeal to me a bit more now if they weren't so much like cotton candy.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Using trehalose helped for me.  I can't stand sickly sweet angel food either.

[Thanks for the Crepes]

When I make angel food or any other kind of sweet baked goods, I will arbitrarily reduce the sugar, and I usually have very good results. I know this is sacrilege to the eG crowd with their insistence on scales for baking anything worthwhile. I don't think the sugar is much of a factor in the structural component like the flour and eggs are, and my experiences seem to support this theory. You can also find old, established recipes for baked goods that vary all over the map for sugar ratio, but not so much variance on flour, eggs, or other leavening ratios.

 

I figure that folks have been baking stuff for many centuries without digital scales, molecular gastronomy ingredients, standard volume measures or even the benefit of a written language to pass down recipes and guidance. I'm not willing to let modern theory get in my way when I want to make an enjoyable baked good to my own taste without launching a controlled science experiment on a NASA scale.

 

If you're like me, and don't like overly sweet stuff and want to test out this theory, you may understandably want to start with something using cheaper ingredients than the dozen egg whites angel food recipes typically call for. When I bake a cheap boxed cake mix, I will typically add some White Lily flour, and/or cocoa to a chocolate cake. Again with the eG sacrilege.  Then I simply adjust the liquid called for upward to compensate since the sugar in the mix can't be adjusted. I may also add a small amount of baking powder or salt if I'm shooting for a less sweet result and have added a lot of flour, cocoa or liquid. After making hundreds of cakes, I know what consistency the batter is supposed to have. Adjusting all the ingredients around the fixed amount of sugar in a mix is more complicated than just using less sugar in a recipe where no other adjustments are necessary, but it does work.

 

I have tried reducing the sugar in angel food cake, and I found no difference other than less sweetness in the result. After all, many meringues are barely sweet at all and still hold their loft, right?

[paulraphael]

When I make angel food or any other kind of sweet baked goods, I will arbitrarily reduce the sugar, and I usually have very good results...

 

It would be interesting to see the texture of a standard recipe next to one with arbitrarily reduced sugar.

 

I don't see anyone arguing for laboratory precision, but there are reasons for the high dose of sugar. It stabilizes the egg white proteins, it acts as a tenderizer (to balance the drying effect of albumin), and it impedes the formation of gluten (usually in cakes, the fat helps with this). It also raises the coagulation temperature of the egg protein and the gelatinization temperature of the flour starch. 

 

I'm willing to bet you'd have to reduce the sugar by a lot for the cake to fail, but that even a modest reduction (without some compensation) would have a negative effect on the texture.

[Thanks for the Crepes]

paulrapheal,

 

With all due respect, we will have to agree to disagree.

 

To me the epic fail is coming out with a cloyingly sweet angel food cake that I don't want to eat, and I still won't be conducting any side-by-side experiments with two dozen eggs to prove my point that I can make a more desirable (to me and and my eaters) angel food cake.

 

Ovens vary, and my old 1970's oven with a broken thermostat is very hard to work with. It's like tending a wood fire, which I have done many times. I can still cook a respectable cake in it, including my sugar-reduced angel food.

 

I still have to advocate for anyone who wishes to reduce the sugar in a baking recipe to give it a try. It is not a structural component like it is in candies.

[SylviaLovegren]

paulrapheal,

 

With all due respect, we will have to agree to disagree.

 

To me the epic fail is coming out with a cloyingly sweet angel food cake that I don't want to eat, and I still won't be conducting any side-by-side experiments with two dozen eggs to prove my point that I can make a more desirable (to me and and my eaters) angel food cake.

 

Ovens vary, and my old 1970's oven with a broken thermostat is very hard to work with. It's like tending a wood fire, which I have done many times. I can still cook a respectable cake in it, including my sugar-reduced angel food.

 

I still have to advocate for anyone who wishes to reduce the sugar in a baking recipe to give it a try. It is not a structural component like it is in candies.

 

 

It would be fun to try the experiment -- but I love sweet sweet sweet angel food.  "Too sweet" is not something you'll hear outta my mouth very often. 

[paulraphael]

With all due respect, we will have to agree to disagree.

 

 

I don't know what we're agreeing to disagree on. Neither of us likes cloyingly sweet cake, and neither of us actually wants to conduct the experiment. 

 

I'd like to sample the results, though, or at least hear about them.

 

I respect that you're happy with the results you're getting, but I also know from a lot of experience that one person's thumbs-up on the internet has a poor chance at predicting my own perceptions.

 

And since the science points to the sugar making a structural difference, I'll assume that it does until I have a fairly objective reason to think otherwise. Exactly what that difference is, and how important it is ... those will remain questions for the time being.

[blue_dolphin]

I posted this over on the small-batch baking topic but since it pertains to angel food cake, I thought I'd add it over here.  

On his podcast, Dave Arnold's been talking about adding jam to the egg whites to add both flavor and stability via the pectin in the jam.  He shared his method in this Instagram post. 

Curious, but not enough to make a giant cake, I ordered a small angel food cake pan (eG-friendly Amazon.com link), suitable for a 6-egg white, half batch and made one with raspberry jam. 

Here's my little raspberry angel food cake baked in that 7" x 4.5" angel food cake pan (should have brushed off the crumbs before the photo 🙃): 

 

Here's a slice. 

The cake is delicious.  The raspberry flavor from the jam really comes through. To me, it looks a little bit pinker than that photo shows but it's still quite light. I think this would make a lovely dessert with any combo of fresh fruit and a corresponding jam. 

 

Except for halving it, I followed Dave's recipe as given. Thought I had malic acid around but couldn't find it so I used citric acid for the acid, which he suggests as an alternate. He doesn't specify superfine sugar but I blitzed mine in the Blendtec anyway because the particular brand of granulated cane sugar I'm using has rather large crystals.  The batter was getting pretty close to the capacity of my 5 qt Kitchen Aid so I'm glad I only tried a half batch. 

[Kim Shook]

On 3/21/2023 at 1:56 PM, blue_dolphin said:

I posted this over on the small-batch baking topic but since it pertains to angel food cake, I thought I'd add it over here.  

On his podcast, Dave Arnold's been talking about adding jam to the egg whites to add both flavor and stability via the pectin in the jam.  He shared his method in this Instagram post. 

Curious, but not enough to make a giant cake, I ordered a small angel food cake pan (eG-friendly Amazon.com link), suitable for a 6-egg white, half batch and made one with raspberry jam. 

Here's my little raspberry angel food cake baked in that 7" x 4.5" angel food cake pan (should have brushed off the crumbs before the photo 🙃😞 

 

Here's a slice. 

The cake is delicious.  The raspberry flavor from the jam really comes through. To me, it looks a little bit pinker than that photo shows but it's still quite light. I think this would make a lovely dessert with any combo of fresh fruit and a corresponding jam. 

 

Except for halving it, I followed Dave's recipe as given. Thought I had malic acid around but couldn't find it so I used citric acid for the acid, which he suggests as an alternate. He doesn't specify superfine sugar but I blitzed mine in the Blendtec anyway because the particular brand of granulated cane sugar I'm using has rather large crystals.  The batter was getting pretty close to the capacity of my 5 qt Kitchen Aid so I'm glad I only tried a half batch. 

So, the pan works with any halved angel food cake recipe?  I would love that!  We don't ever finish a regular sized cake, but probably would a half size one!  

[blue_dolphin]

4 minutes ago, Kim Shook said:

So, the pan works with any halved angel food cake recipe?  I would love that!  We don't ever finish a regular sized cake, but probably would a half size one!  

I haven’t tried other recipes to test it out but the description on the Wilton website says it takes half a standard mix so I’d think it would be OK.