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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Willie's Orange Bread

 

 

I have a hard time getting cleaning and organizing done. I know I’m not alone in this because I was talking to a friend the other day who had decided to organize her closet, found an old box of knitting, abandoned the closet altogether, and made herself a sweater instead. 

As I mentioned last week when I shared my Halloween stitching project, I’ve been digging around in my personal archives lately, bringing out old projects to finish and rediscovering recipes I’ve saved over the years. There is something wonderfully dangerous about opening a box of old things. You never know what you’re going to find, or what you’re going to abandon your current project to do.

  I know there is a great deal of interest these days in digitizing recipes, and I certainly understand why. But to me, there is nothing quite as charming as a handwritten recipe, particularly when that handwriting is fifty years old. Yes, fifty. Even as I write that, I’m having a moment. One of my recent discoveries was a recipe for an orange quick bread from the early 1970s. It was a morning bread that I always remembered enjoying, and there, tucked away among my personal archives, was the original recipe. My mother had received it from her friend Willie Schebelen (Willie was short for Willisdean) about five years before Willie passed away.

 The recipe itself is simple, but the memories it stirred up were anything but. The moment I took that first bite, I was transported straight back to the seventies. Suddenly I could hear the high school band playing and the cheerleaders cheering for the team. I could hear my friends splashing as they jumped into the lake, and I could almost taste the greasy goodness of burgers from the local drive-in.

Funny how food can do that. A taste, a smell, a particular texture, and suddenly you’re not standing in your kitchen anymore. You’re sixteen again, sitting somewhere you haven’t thought about in years, surrounded by people and sounds and places that you thought you’d forgotten.

I don’t suppose baking this loaf will transport you quite so dramatically. Unless, of course, you also happened to spend your formative years in the seventies eating orange bread and hanging around drive-ins. But I think you’ll enjoy it anyway. 

It’s a lovely, old-fashioned quick bread, studded with raisins and pecans and fragrant with orange. And if you happen to have a handwritten recipe tucked away in a box somewhere, perhaps this will inspire you to dig it out. Just be careful.

You might start cleaning out a closet and end up baking a loaf of bread…or making a sweater. 

Willie’s Orange Bread

 1 c. orange freshly squeezed juice

1 c. raisins

½ c. chopped pecans

1 beaten egg

2 t. vanilla

¼ t. salt

2 c. flour

1 t. baking powder

1 t. baking soda

1 c. sugar

2 T. butter

1 T. grated orange rind

 Cream the butter and sugar, then mix in the beaten egg. In a separate bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients until well combined. Stir the wet and dry mixtures together until just blended. Pour into a greased loaf pan and bake at 350°F for about 50 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean.

Enjoy every nostalgic bite.

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A Taste of History: Chicken Salad with Macadamia Rum Dressing

 

This gem of a recipe hails from the 1989 Westerfield House Luncheon Cookbook, a rare treasure from a once-iconic restaurant and inn nestled in Freeburg, IL, just 30 minutes from St. Louis, MO. The Westerfield House, open from 1983 to 2002, was a culinary haven, even earning a spot among the top 250 U.S. restaurants in ‘Conde Nast Traveler’ (April 1995). 

This Chicken Salad with Macadamia Rum Dressing was featured in their “Potpourri of Salads” luncheon menu, alongside delights like Orange Marmalade Muffins (coming soon to the blog!), Homemade French Bread, Fresh Fruit Fantasia with Poppyseed Dressing, Crab Imperial, and the whimsical “Flowerpot” dessert—a layered treat of cake, cinnamon ice cream, and meringue, served in a flower pot with a live flower on top. Dining at Westerfield House was truly an experience to remember.

Here’s the recipe to bring a piece of that magic to your table:

Chicken Salad with Macadamia Rum Dressing

3 c. diced, cooked chicken
¾ c. Duke’s mayonnaise
1 c. finely diced celery
Sea salt  and white pepper, to taste
Crisp lettuce leaves
Macadamia Rum Dressing (recipe below)
Macadamia nuts, for garnish

Season diced chicken with salt and white pepper to taste. Mix with ¼ cup mayonnaise and chill for about 2 hours. 

Combine chilled chicken with remaining ½ c. mayonnaise and diced celery. Using an ice cream scoop, portion onto crisp lettuce leaves. Just before serving, drizzle with Macadamia Rum Dressing and sprinkle with macadamia nuts. 

Serves: 8

Macadamia Rum Dressing

¼ c. pineapple juice
¾ c. Duke’s mayonnaise 
1 t. rum extract (I used 2 t. for extra flavor)

Blend all ingredients until smooth. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Yield: 1 cup

This dish is a perfect blend of creamy, crunchy, and tropical flavors—a true nod to the Westerfield House legacy. Enjoy!

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