Chocolate Feather Cake: An Old Recipe Worth Rescuing

 

I don’t make angel food cake because I don’t like angel food cake, and yet, it appears that I have made an angel food cake. Let me explain.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been going through my old recipes. This is partly an exercise in organization and partly an archaeological dig into my own culinary past. One recipe I couldn’t find (and have been looking for for years) was for chocolate feather cake. It was a family friend’s iconic dessert. Anytime she was asked to bring a dessert to a gathering, this was what she brought. And it wasn’t just a recipe she had picked up somewhere along the way. It had been handed down to her by her mother-in-law, who had gotten it from her mother, so this is an old recipe with some history behind it. I had never actually eaten it.That seemed like a fairly significant omission, particularly since I was already in the midst of reliving the past one recipe card at a time. So when I finally found the recipe, I had to make it.

 There was just one little problem.

 Fifteen egg whites.

 Yes. Fifteen.

 Which means, of course, that there are also fifteen egg yolks sitting on your counter looking at you accusingly.

I managed to put those yolks to good use. They ended up in a meatball pasta dish, chicken à la King, and a swoonably delicious butterscotch pudding. The remaining yolks got a little salt, a good whisking, and a trip to the freezer to think about what they might become when I get around to them.

And then there was the cake.

 Despite my general lack of enthusiasm for angel food cake, I have to admit that this one is delicious. It is light and spongy, certainly, but the chocolate is intense enough to make you forget that you are, essentially, eating a very tall chocolate cloud.

 The recipe card I uncovered is heavily stained, slightly foxed, and has those wonderful crimped edges that immediately tell you it has been around for a while. Someone wrote on the card that the cake freezes beautifully and retains its texture when thawed.

 I believe it.

 And while I still wouldn’t exactly say that I’ve become an angel food cake convert, I understand now why this particular cake was so beloved. Sometimes the old recipes know what they’re doing.Chocolate Feather Cake

 This makes one tall cake in a 10-inch tube pan, about 4 inches deep.

2 c. sugar, divided
1½ c. cake flour
⅔ c. unsweetened cocoa powder
15 large egg whites, at room temperature*
1½ t. vanilla extract
⅔ t. salt
1½ t. cream of tartar

 Preheat the oven to 300°F.

 Combine 1 cup of the sugar with the cake flour and cocoa powder. Sift the mixture together three or four times. Yes, three or four times. This is one of those old recipes that is not interested in your impatience.

 In a large, impeccably clean mixing bowl, beat the egg whites with the vanilla, salt, and cream of tartar until foamy.

Gradually add the remaining 1 cup of sugar while continuing to beat. Keep beating until the meringue is very stiff—stiff enough that you can turn the bowl upside down without the contents making a break for freedom.

 Sift the flour-and-cocoa mixture over the meringue in several additions, gently folding after each addition. Be careful not to overmix; the whole point here is to preserve as much of that lovely air as possible.

 Spoon the batter into an ungreased 10-inch tube pan.

 Bake at 300°F for 30 minutes. Increase the oven temperature to 350°F and continue baking for another 30 minutes. Check the cake with a cake tester or toothpick. It may need another 10–15 minutes. The tester should come out almost clean, with perhaps a few moist crumbs.

 Immediately invert the pan onto a bottle or cooling rack and allow the cake to hang upside down until completely cool.

 This keeps the cake from collapsing.

Once completely cool, run a thin knife around the edges and tube of the pan to release the cake.

 And there you have it: a very tall, very chocolaty, very feather-light cake that I apparently made despite not liking angel food cake.

I suppose there are worse things that could happen when cleaning out an old recipe box.

 *A word about those 15 egg whites: Get yourself an egg separator. I recommend this one. It makes the job ridiculously simple and quick as a flash, and I suspect you’re going to discover plenty of uses for it in the future. It separates eggs magnificently.

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