Amazing Gluten Free Angel Food cake

Last week i made ice-cream. Twice! Both recipes were from my favorite book on the subject, Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz. I made coffee ice-cream to pair with the my banana chocolate chip cake for my dad's 60th birthday. and then classic chocolate to have with oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for a dinner with my brothers. If you are familiar with David's ice-cream, many of his recipes are custard based or the French-style method which yields such a rich and creamy ice cream i had my family promising to be faithful regulars as soon as i open up my own ice cream shop! (not happening anytime soon!) The other result from all the churning around here is that i had a fridge with quite a few eggs whites that needed to be used or i'd be tossing them out soon.

Several times recently as i've served ice-cream or cake or cookies, those around me have joked about the irony that i of all people who love to cook and bake am married to a man with wheat and dairy allergies. And true, maybe one of reasons why Daryl has stayed so slim all these years is that he can't eat all the temptations i make. But i have not let his food issues get in the way of attempting to put before him sweet surprises! i've had my fair share of bloopers in the kitchen with gluten free / dairy free this and that. It takes a while (i'm talking years) to get fairly comfortable and even now after several years, when i experiment with something new, sometimes it turns out great, like the cake i made a couple nights ago, and some of my attempts turn out best suited for the garbage (unfortunately the waffles i made last weekend fell into that category... one little change to my fool-proof recipe was all it took to ruin it! which really sucked because i always triple the batter to make enough for the whole week, so it was a lot of wasted rice/oatmeal/tapoica/etc / etc flours!)

So a couple nights ago when i opened the fridge to see what veggies were on their last leg and needed to be consumed for dinner i saw those eggs whites looking at me. Asking to be put to good use! I sat down to look through my recipes and came across Angel Food cake... do you know Angel Food cake calls for 12 eggs whites?! no problem! The nice thing about Angel food cake and what makes it such a great recipe if you avoid wheat and dairy is that it doesn't call for any fat, no butter to replace with various oils. and it only needs 1 cup of flour which is quite small for a cake.

It was my first time to try making Angel food cake and i'm excited at how it came out; Daryl thought it was great. I served it the next day to someone else and they couldn't even tell it was GF/Dairy free! if you are not familiar with GF /Dairy free food then you may not be able to appreciate just how exciting it is when you make something and it actually tastes, looks, and has the same texture as the original. This cake gets a 5 starts in all those categories!

without further ado:

Angel Food Cake (with my changes/instructions)

• 12 eggs (enough for 1 1/2cups)
• 1 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar
• 1 cup flour (i used 1/2 white rice (asian brand), 1/4 tapioca starch, 1/4 sweet sorghum)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract (optional, i left this out and it was still great)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
  
• 1 cup sugar
• 1. Bring 1 1/2 cup egg whites to room temp. Place bowl in a sink of warm water (careful not to get any water in the egg whites) to speed up the process if you don't have 30 mins to let it sit on your counter.
  
• 2. Meanwhile, mix confectioners' sugar and flours together (sift for even fluffier results). Add cream of tartar, to egg whites; beat on high speed. (make sure mixing bowl is very clean and dry... any water will hinder your egg whites from rising.) Towards the end, slowly add sugar, beating until sugar is dissolved and stiff peaks form. Add extracts and salt. Fold in flour mixture, 1/4 cup at a time. Gently spoon into an ungreased 10-in. tube pan or bundt pan. Cut through batter with a knife to remove air pockets. Bake at 350 degrees F for 40-45 minutes or until cake springs back when lightly touched. Immediately turn pan upside down and place on a bottle so it sits inverted to cool. Let it cool completely before removing cake from pan.