Saturday Night Baking with Lisle

Since the beautiful Charleston weather has arrived (or should I say hot and sticky?), I haven't been doing much baking. In case you haven't ever turned on an oven, they get hot. And Charleston humidity + more heat in the kitchen = sweaty mess. Not only that, but who wants to be indoors when you can be on a boat! Last Saturday, I was out on my sweet friend Lisle's boyfriend's boat. Lisle and I were chatting about how she wants to become more domesticated, and poof, my blog came up! Lisle and Kevin recently migrated to a lovely castle condo downtown. She told me that their new kitchen would be great to have a cooking session in, and since everyone was coming over that night, we should make something!

We needed something healthy and delicious. I suggested angel food cake -- fat free and, with the addition of strawberries, a very summery dessert! I picked up the goods from Publix and we all met back at the castle. The boys played around with expensive electronics while Lisle and I fancied ourselves and broke out the alcohol and cake ingredients (not to be mixed!). In the words of Ashley, "you can never be too fancy" and fancy we were for baking a cake.

As Lisle sipped her white wine and I chugged my vodka cran, we got to work. I taught her how to crack eggs, separate the white from the yolk, and hull strawberries. As Lisle separated her first egg, a little of the yolk got into the bowl. "Oh, it's totally fine! We're doing all 12 eggs, so a little bit can't hurt....right?" WRONG.

After we combined the egg whites, water, vanilla extract, and cream of tartar, it was time to beat. To properly make an angel food cake, you must beat with a hand mixer until you reach medium peaks. Forming peaks is when you beat egg whites to the stage where the mixture forms soft, rounded peaks when the beaters are removed. For a great visual guide on peak stages, please visit this link. I remembered the last time I made angel food cake it took quite a while to form medium peaks, but this was taking forever...The boys kept coming in and making crude jokes asking, "You've been beating for 35 minutes and you can't get any foam?" Heh.

Lisle and I took turns because it felt like our hands were going numb from holding the mixer so long! In the mean time, we had a photo shoot with Alison!

Eventually we gave up, incorporated the dry ingredients, poured it all in a fluted cake pan, and popped that sucker in the oven!

We all know how I have little to no patience, so we sat by the oven and stared at it:

Thirty-five minutes later, I was one proud little chef and pulled the perfectly-risen masterpiece out of the oven:

Julius was angry for having to wait so long:

 

We topped the cake with fresh strawberries and fat free cool whip....

and sliced it up for everyone to enjoy!

 

While we were enjoying the light and fluffy cake, I googled "why peaks won't form" on my Blackberry. Apparently if you get the slightest amount of yolk in your whites, it makes it really difficult to form peaks. Having any oil in the bowl or on the mixers will also create this problem! Who knew? Luckily, the cake turned out great and everyone was happy.

Happy Housewarming to Kevin & Lisle! :)

Question of the Day: What's your favorite cake to eat? What's your favorite cake to bake?