Fresh, Local Strawberries & Angel Food Cake

By the Concord Food Co-op Bakehouse Pastry Chefs

In New Hampshire, our local strawberry window is short but sweet: just a few weeks mid/late June. Though the harvest yields and flavor each year, the aroma and flavor far surpasses what typically gets trucked in from across the globe. Strawberries make any recipe better. That’s certainly the case for angel food cake, which looks plain boring without strawberries.

You’d be shocked by the ingredients list on conventional angel food and how many chemicals they fit into a “healthy” cake. Besides artificial flavors and preservatives, you’ll often find sodium laurel sulfate and sometimes propylene glycol. These dubious substances are more commonly found in shampoo and deodorant, and most of our customers won’t put them on their skin, let alone in their mouths.

In contrast, the Co-op’s bakery only uses real deal ingredients for desserts made from scratch by our trained pastry chefs. We even use flour milled in Vermont and local eggs, dairy, and seasonal fruit. Now that’s a cake you not only feel good about but that also tastes amazing!

Here, we share our top-secret recipe. But, if separating more than a dozen eggs by hand seems like a chore, just call in a special order, then swing by our bakery to pick one up ready to eat.

Homemade All-Natural Angel Food Cake

Ingredients

• 14 room-temperature large egg whites
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 1/4 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1 1/8 cups sugar (ie: white granulated)
• 2 1/4 ounces confectioner’s sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 3/4 tablespoon pure lemon juice
• 3/4 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1/3 teaspoon almond extract

Directions

1.  Preheat the oven to 350°F.
2. Carefully separate yolks from the egg whites. It’s very important that you don’t get any yolk in your whites. To avoid any mistakes, do each egg individually in a small cup, then add to a larger bowl of egg whites. 
3. Sift flour, cornstarch, sugar, and confectioner’s sugar three times. 
4. Whip egg whites, cream of tartar, lemon juice, vanilla extract, and almond extract until stiff and holding a nice soft peak.
5. Fold in flour/sugar mix in three parts. 
6. Pour it into an ungreased large two-piece angel food cake tube pan and bake for approximately 40 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.
7. Remove from the oven, rest the pan upside down on a glass bottle to let the cake cool completely. 
8. To remove the cake from the pan, run a knife along the rim of the pan first. 
9. Serve with fresh strawberries and whipped cream

Strawberries:Chop and combine with 2 tablespoons of sugar per 1 pound fruit.

Whipped Cream:Whip heavy cream with confectioners sugar and vanilla.


To special order this or other desserts, call our bakery at 603-225-6840.