Milly's bakes: Baking Angel

At the weekend I said that I really wanted to try the Angel cake - the reason? Well, it was a technical challenge on the 2013 bake off, and at the time I thought the angel cake was a light sponge with buttercream in it, so after seeing it on the bake-off (and all the fun they had trying to make it), I've really wanted to give it a go.

A good friend, who knew I really wanted to make it, got me a really lovely angel cake tin for Christmas, that even has little hearts in the base of the tin, (although as I start to write this post, I've no idea if this has worked!) It's currently looking like this - so it will be a moment of truth at the end of the post :) yes, it's propped up on a champagne bottle, again from my friend, (only the best for my angel cake!!)

This week has been more planning, trying to make sure I picked the best recipe for my tin. The tin is 9 inches, and the only recipe I could find in any of my books was for 8 inches. Mary Berry's bake off recipe was 10 inches, so after a bit of searching I found one for a 9 inch tin. After recovering from the shock of needing 12 egg whites, I then set to locating the other ingredients. Cream of tater (or as my lovely brother suggested, tartar sauce - I think not). I thought that would be easy! My mum always had some, and before all the work on my kitchen, I thought I'd had some in my cupboards too. So last night I popped over to the local garage, which is surprisingly good for baking supplies (I even located arrowroot there, after searching all our supermarkets, when making a cheesecake sauce last year), but no! Nothing in the garage, so in the pouring rain I trotted over to the nearest supermarket and has a look there. I found myself staring at the baking aisle for a good 10 mins before I finally spotted it. Not quite what I was looking for, but it did the job:

I also had to locate quite a few eggs! Thankfully my lovely next door neighbours keep chickens, so do tend to keep me in a steady supply for all my baking needs, although even I thought asking for 12 might be a step too far, but all their chickens are being very productive atm, so they had a good stash ready to use up! Everything else needed was really just basic store cupboard ingredients, so I set too it.

Here's my pics as I work through the various stages, if nothing else, over the last couple of weeks with my soufflé and angel cake, I've really picked up separating eggs! Now I just need to work out some lovely egg yolk recipes (any sugestions??)

How many eggs??

So just as I finish this post, the cake has been released from the tin. There was a moment of fear, as it's a quick release tin, but half the cake was stuck to the non stick side (at least there was no slipping then?) and when I released it, the cake tried to split in half - arghh - quickly unreleasing the tin, and then locating my trusty pink palette knife (in fact, another gift from my friend Matt, he really does know me well!). Cake separated from the sides, I set to releasing it again, and then slapped on some cream cheese style butter cream, and some vanilla and cherry jam, and voila, one angel cake. Proof will e in the pudding tomorrow, it's a bit late to be munching cake this evening, but I'll give my work colleagues a surprise treat tomorrow and see what they think!