Is there anything dreamier than the tender crumb of a light-as-air angel food cake? I’ve loved angel food cake ever since I first tasted it as a child. It reminded me of cotton candy. No wonder: angel food cake is essentially a fluffy blend of a super-sugary meringue laced with just enough flour to give it a little structure. In other words, there was very little to get in the way of the pure-sugar flavor that my childhood palate adored!
In the 80’s, low-fat became the “healthy” battle cry, and angel food cake came into vogue, with no fat weighing it down, but plenty of white processed sugar fluffing it up. In fact, fat-free-but-sugary baked treats were practically a diet fad unto themselves for well over a decade. Of course, modern science (and let’s just say it: common sense) tells us that we could all benefit from cutting down on processed sugar.
So how to bring back the flavor and texture of the angel food cakes I adored as a child without throwing our blood sugar levels out of whack? Today’s recipe is the solution.
First, I cut the sugar down by about 25 percent over typical recipes and it worked great. Secondly, I skipped purchasing “superfine” white sugar, and tried less-processed organic versions. I pulsed the coarser sugar in the blender myself to make it powdery-fine. (It’s still sugar, but even baby steps toward healthy eating count!).