[1] Angel food cake with strawberry glaze (photo © American Egg Board).

[2] Berries are a perfect garnish for angel food cake (photo © Anna Ozerova | Dreamstime).

[3] Angel food cake is baked in a tube pan because the hollow center provides support for the delicate, egg-white based batter as it rises, preventing it from collapsing in the middle. The tube allows the batter to climb the sides of the pan evenly (photo © Chicago Metallic).

[4] Light and fluffy angel food cake made with egg whites is the opposite of dense, heavy cakes. (photo © Bhofack | Dreamstime).

[5] You can also make a roulade of angel food cake. This one is filled with lemon curd; here’s the recipe (photos #5, #7, and #10 © Taste Of Home).

[6] How about a chocolate angel food cake? Here’s the recipe from Martha Stewart, with a double fudge frosting (photo © Martha Stewart).

[7] Bake one, invite friends.

[8] You can ice it if you like (photo © Wilton | Facebook).

[8] Fusion food: a lemon meringue angel food cake. Here’s the recipe (photo © King Arthur Baking).

[9] An ice cream cake—or in this case, a rainbow sherbet cake. Here’s the recipe.

October 10th is National Angel Food Cake Day. Bake one from scratch, or pick up a ready-made cake and serve it with this delicious strawberry glaze.

Angel food cake is a white sponge cake: a light, flourless cake made with sugar, cream of tartar, salt, vanilla or almond extract, and a dozen or so egg whites, depending on the recipe. There is no leavening.

Chocolate angel food cakes were developed much later, adding cocoa powder.

The cake is popularly served with berries and whipped cream, although it can be served plain or with a dessert sauce (caramel, chocolate, custard, fruit, etc.).

Angel food cake originated in the U.S. and first became popular in the late 19th century. See the history of angel food cake below, along with Fanny Farmer’s 1884 recipe, the first time the recipe appeared in a cook book.

Angel food cakes are generally made in a tube pan (photo #4). If you’re going to purchase one, get one with a removable bottom.

BONUS: Check below for a third recipe, the original Fanny Farmer Angel Food Cake recipe from 1884, plus the history of angel food cake.

Two recipes follow, but first:

> The year’s 55 cake holidays.

> The different types of cake and the history of cake: a photo glossary.

> The history of angel food cake is below.

> The history of cake pans.
 
 
RECIPE #1: STRAWBERRY GLAZE FOR ANGEL FOOD CAKE

Ingredient For The Strawberry Glaze

 
Preparation

1. STIR orange juice into cornstarch in a medium saucepan. Add strawberries, sugar and marmalade. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally.

2. REDUCE heat to low; cook 2 minutes, stirring, or until sauce thickens. Cool or chill.

3. CUT cake into 12 slices. Spoon sauce over each slice. Garnish with optional whipped cream.
 
 
RECIPE #2: ANGEL FOOD CAKE

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. PREHEAT the oven to 375°F, with rack in the lowest position.

2. MIX the powdered sugar and flour in medium bowl; set aside. In a large bowl, beat the egg whites and cream of tartar with an electric mixer on medium speed until foamy.

Both the bowl and the whisk attachment must be clean, dry, and free of grease in order to get the maximum volume from the egg whites.

Similarly, angel food cake pans are not greased so that the batter can cling to the sides of the pan as it bakes, and reach its full volume.

3. BEAT in the granulated sugar, 2 tablespoons at a time, on high speed, adding the vanilla, almond extract and salt with the last addition of sugar. Continue beating until stiff and glossy. Do not over-beat.

4. SPRINKLE the powdered sugar-flour mixture, 1/4 cup at a time, over egg white mixture, folding in with a rubber spatula just until the sugar-flour mixture disappears. Use the spatula to cut down vertically through the center of egg whites, across the bottom of the bowl and up the side, turning the egg whites over.

Rotate the bowl one-fourth turn and repeat. Continue folding this way until the ingredients are just blended (do not over-blend). Use the spatula to break large air pockets, pushing the batter gently against the side of the pan and the tube.

This folding technique is used so that the batter will not lose its volume. At each step, take care not to over-mix, over-blend, or over-combine the cake batter; this will deflate the meringue, creating a dense cake.

5. PUSH the batter into an ungreased 10 x 4 inch angel food cake pan (tube pan). Cut gently through the batter with a metal spatula or knife to break the air pockets.

6. BAKE 30 to 35 minutes or until the cracks feel dry and the top springs back when touched lightly. Immediately turn the pan upside down onto a heat-proof funnel or an empty wine bottle. This is so the baked cake will maintain its volume and not shrink as it cools.

7. KEEP the cake inverted about 2 hours or until it’s completely cool. Loosen the side of the cake with a knife or long metal spatula; remove it from the pan.
 
 
RECIPE #3: FANNY FARMER’S 1896 ANGEL FOOD CAKE

Fannie Farmer’s 1884 angel food-like cake was published in The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. Although it wasn’t yet called angel food cake, you can see that her recipe was nearly identical to today’s cakes. Some earlier recipes used cornstarch flour.

Cornstarch, a starch, is a thickening agent. It is not a substitute for cream of tartar, which is an acid used for helping to stabilize the egg whites when whipped (leading to a better rise in cakes and meringues), leavening, and preventing crystallization.

This cake was sometimes called snow-drift cake or white sponge cake before angel food cake became the official name in later edition in the 1886 edition of the cook book.

> See the history of angel food cake below.

Ingredients

 
Preparation

Editor’s Note: For ease in reading, we have numbered the steps and given them modern formatting.

1. PREPARE the oven and pan. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Use an unbuttered tube pan (the batter needs to climb the sides).

2. SIFT the dry ingredients. Sift the flour and salt together four to five times to ensure a light texture.

3. WHIP the egg whites. In a large bowl, beat the egg whites until foamy. Add cream of tartar and continue beating until soft peaks form. Gradually add sugar, one tablespoon at a time, and beat until stiff, glossy peaks form.

4. FOLD in dry ingredients. Gently fold the sifted flour mixture into the egg whites, a little at a time, using a spatula. Add vanilla extract and fold gently to maintain the airiness.

5. BAKE the cake. Pour the batter into the unbuttered tube pan and smooth the top. Bake for 40–50 minutes, or until the top is golden and springs back when touched.

6. COOL upside down. Immediately invert the pan over a bottle or on its feet (if it has feet). Let cool completely before removing the cake. [Source: ChatGPT 2025-01-24]
 
 
THE HISTORY OF ANGEL FOOD CAKE

Angel food cake likely originated in the early 19th century. The first angel food cakes were probably baked in the South by enslaved African-American, due to the strength required to whip the air into the whites. They evolved from sponge cakes (the history of sponge cake).

Other names for sponge and foam cakes included Hot Water Sponge Cake, “”Sunshine Cake,” and “Moonshine Cake.”

These cakes relied on beaten eggs for leavening, resulting in their characteristic lightness—although unlike Angel Food Cake, they recipes used the egg yolk as well as the white (Angel Food Cake is whites-only, thus the white color).

By the late 1800s, with the invention of the egg beater, it had become a widely recognized and beloved American dessert.

The earliest known recipes for angel food cake appeared in the late 19th century, specifically in the 1870s and 1880s. Here are some key milestones in its recorded history:

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We love this party favor idea from Popcorn.org. We’d suggest them as trick-or-treat items, but many parents don’t let kids eat the “open” food for safety reasons.

So, bring them to friends, to the office, and anywhere else you like.
 
 
RECIPE: HAUNTED HALLOWEEN POPCORN
HANDS

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. PLACE 1-3 pieces of candy corn at the end of each finger (depending on size of glove), pointy side first, to make fingernails.

2. FILL the glove with popcorn and tie it off with ribbon or yarn.

Pickled garlic is a healthful, tasty garnish and ingredient. You can buy it in jars, but it’s almost as easy to make your own.

Don’t worry about being overwhelmed by garlic flavor: The cloves lose a lot of their pungency in the pickling process. They are still garlicky, but tame.

Enjoy pickled garlic on salads, sandwiches, skewered appetizers or main courses, as a Martini garnish or as a snack like any pickles. You can also bring jars of it as house gifts—so much more interesting than most bottles of wine.

You can make the pickled garlic more of a condiment by pickling sliced onions and cucumbers along with the garlic cloves.

RECIPE: PICKLED GARLIC

Ingredients

Use pickled garlic to garnish just about anything, including canapés and crostini. Above, turkey and hummus with pickled garlic garnishes.Photo by Elvira Kalviste | THE NIBBLE.

Preparation

1. SEPARATE the heads of garlic into cloves, with the outer skin removed. Set aside. TIP: To soften and loosen the skins, blanch the cloves in rapidly boiling water for 30 seconds, immediately immerse in cold water, drain and peel the cloves.

2. COMBINE the vinegar, sugar, peppercorns, cloves, bay leaf, chiles and lemon zest in a saucepan. Bring to a boil; continue to boil for 2 minutes.

3. ADD the garlic, and continue to boil for 4 more minutes. Remove from heat and let stand overnight at room temperature.

4. TRANSFER to a clean jar. You can strain out the herbs and spices or keep them (we keep them for the aesthetic effect). Cover and store in the refrigerator; the pickled cloves will keep for 6 to 8 weeks. Over the first week, the cloves will become even more pickled.

TIP: When the garlic cloves have been consumed, taste the brine. You may want to incorporate it with oil into a salad dressing.

If you’d like to simply purchase pickled garlic, consider Rabbit’s Pickled Garlic, a NIBBLE Top Pick Of The Week.

We love these pickled cloves, made in chipotle, habanero, habanero dill, smoke and spicy dill. Read our review.

We all know that carrots are good for us: 1 medium carrot, just 25 calories, provides 203% of our daily value of vitamin A, a powerful antioxidant.* Beyond nibbling on a carrot stick or baby carrot, though, we just don’t take enough time to think about what to do with them.

Here are two easy recipes from Grimmway Farms, a California grower of carrots (and most of the baby carrots you come across).

The carrot hummus recipe is below. Find more carrot recipes at Grimmway.com.
 
 
RECIPE: CURRIED CARROT SOUP

This dairy-free recipe is low in calories: just 91 calories per serving.

Ingredients For 6 Servings

 
Preparation

1. HEAT the olive oil in a sauce pan over medium heat. Add the diced onions, diced carrots, curry powder, cumin, salt and pepper. Toss to combine and cook for about 3 minutes.

2. ADD the chicken broth and cover the pot. Continue to cook over medium heat for another 15 minutes.

3. PURÉE: Carefully remove the cover and purée the soup in batches in a blender. Alternatively, purée the soup in the pot using an immersion blender wand.

[1] Curried carrot soup (photo © Grimmway Farms).

[2] Carrots fresh from the field (photo © Jason Leung | Unsplash).

 
Nutrition Per Serving: 91 calories; 4 g total fat; 0.6 g saturated fat; 2 g monounsaturated fat; 1 g polyunsaturated fat; 0 mg cholesterol and trans fat; 946 mg sodium; 11 g carbohydrate; 3 g fiber; 5 g protein.

Prep time is 5 minutes, cook time is 5 minutes.

Ingredients

1. PLACE all ingredients in a food processor and pulse several times to coarsely chop. Then let food processor run for about 2 minutes until smooth.

2. REMOVE hummus from food processor bowl to serving bowl, using a spatula. Serve with carrot and other vegetable chips, baby carrots and other crudités, or pita chips.

Nutrition Per Serving: 102 calories; 5g total fat; 1 g saturated fat; 0 g trans fat; 2 g monounsaturated fat; 2 g polyunsaturated fat; 0 mg cholesterol; 306 mg sodium; 11 g carbohydrate; 3 g fiber; 4 g protein.
 
 
CARROT TRIVIA

Contrary to popular belief, baby carrots are not grown bite-sized. They are bred long and slender, and then cut into two-inch pieces and lathed to a uniform width.

 
__________________

*Yes, is key to good vision, a healthy immune system, good skin, and general cell growth. It has been studied as a treatment for many other conditions, including cancers, cataracts and HIV. However, the results to date are inconclusive.
  

Serve it as a side dish or as a salad. Is this a potato-squash mix with a garnishing of arugula, or a “salad?” Call it what you will, it makes a beautiful impression. To make it more salad-like, double the amounts of spinach and arugula.

Prep time 10 minutes, cook time 45 minutes.

The tip: Look at other favorite foods and new ways to combine them.

RECIPE: WARM POTATO & ACORN SQUASH
SALAD

Ingredients For 4-6 Servings

What a gorgeous dish! Photo courtesy Heather Scholten | Farmgirl Gourmet.

Preparation

1. PREHEAT the oven to 425°F.

2. ADD 1 teaspoon of the oil to a large baking dish and add the potatoes, squash, rosemary, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes and the remaining oil. Toss lightly to coat.

3. ROAST for 40 to 45 minutes, or until the potatoes are fork tender. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes.

4. COMBINE the roasted vegetables, spinach/arugula mix and feta in a large bowl. Toss lightly to combine. Serve immediately.
 
FINGERLING POTATOES

Fingerlings are small, stubby, finger-shaped potatoes grown from a variety of heritage potato cultivars. Fingerling varieties grow small and narrow naturally. Fully mature when harvested, they are not new potatoes.

Fingerlings are commonly either halved and roasted as a side dish or used in salads.

Popular fingerling varieties include the yellow-skinned Russian Banana Fingerling, the orange-skinned French Fingerling and the Purple Peruvian Fingerling. They are often sold in bags with the three varieties mixed.