Anyway... he decided that Angel Food Cake with Marshmallow frosting was more Easter-appropriate. "Like a peep" he said. "It'll be easy" he said. Well, I wasn't going to waste all of my mom's eggs for the egg white to make them for him. We decided that he would come down to my apartment before I went home for break and we'd make them together. Let me clarify that by making together I mean that I mix everything, he sits there and plays Temple Run on his phone except for when I need a third hand, and then he eats the left over batter/frosting.
Have you made Angel Food cake from scratch before? You need to get the egg whites to form stiff peaks. Easy, right? Sure, with an electric mixer or some heavy duty arm muscles! Do I have that? No, I have a little baby-sized whisk and little arm muscles. I believe this is where our problem started. Whisking 12 egg whites starting at 9pm, by hand, with Boyfriend who realizes that my boobs jiggle as I whisk and needs to point that out every 5 minutes. Not easy. At all.
At one point, we did have the brilliant idea (honestly, brilliant) that if we used two whisks in the bowl at the same time, it'd be like an electric mixer--We used one giant whisk and my baby whisk--I couldn't stop laughing at how ridiculous it looked. By about 10:15, we said it was good enough. This escalated our problem. It was no where near stiff peaks, not even medium peaks.
I'm not going to give you that recipe; I honestly have no idea if it would work or not. It didn't work for us, but I'm pretty sure that was our fault. After about 17 minutes in the oven (which is not a ridiculous amount of time for cupcakes) the outsides were burnt and the inside was squishy. We stacked them into a tower.
Fast forward five days to Easter. I didn't bring cupcakes, we're full on ham and candy, and we're bored. Let's try Angel Food Cupcakes again. At 8pm this time. With a smaller recipe. And an electric mixer.
SOOOOOO much better. Boyfriend still pointed out every five minutes that my boobs jiggle when I mix, but the egg whites formed the proper peaks and that was all that matter.
We (really I) even made a pretty tasty lemon buttercream to go with them. Even though the icing looks weird (it fell upside down in transit) it's so much prettier than our Angel Food blocks. I know it's not a fantastic picture, but it's the best I could get.
The recipe we used for the cake was actually from About.com.The only change I made was using AP flour (1 cup minus 2 Tablespoons) since we didn't have cake flour. We did cut the recipe in half and got 18 cupcakes, so I wouldn't say that a full recipe would only make 24. Though. it might if you actually filled the cupcake liners all the way. That was definitely a mistake on my part. Since I'm used to usual cake batters only filling about 2/3 of the liner, that's what I did with these. Well, they kind of shrink. So I highly recommend filling them ALL the way.
The frosting recipe was not really a recipe. We didn't want a super fluffy thick layer on these since they're light. Boyfriend didn't want just a glaze though. Pretty much all I did was mix a stick of butter, probably a cup of powdered sugar, and some lemon extract together. I didn't actually measure any of it. We also added some yellow food coloring so it wouldn't be white on white.
Making this was a lot of work, but it's worth the work. Take the time and effort to bake the Angel Food from scratch. It's not squeaky like store-bought stuff can be. It definitely tastes better than a box mix. Plus, if it's for someone you love, they'll definitely appreciate it.
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