Cake #7: Oops I made a Cake! Orange Angel Food

Orange Angel Food Cake with Caramel and Tropical Fruit Compote. Now that is a mouthful. I am behind a cake now too. Mindy made the lemon loaves for a brunch. I needed this cake for a kiddie cocktail party. Cocktail hour. Easy Nibbles. Make it in advance. Z can't have chocolate. K can't have peanuts. Nobody wants to load their kid up on frosting and take them home to bed. Enter the Angel Food cake. No frosting mess. Low cal (ish), and with the fruit compote, down right healthy.

There are a few things I liked about making this cake. #1 - NO BUTTER! Don't get me wrong. I love butter. But the last couple of cakes were kind of over the top. When I have to tear into the second package of butter, or the third for 1 recipe, even that is a bit much for me. #2 - NO greasing/flouring/parchmenting the pan! Wow, am I growing to hate that task. Fortunately, Elliot is getting old enough to take it on for me. #3 - I used our hand blender instead of the counter-top Kitchen Aid. I did not have to dig it out of the cabinet or clean & put it away, and it helped me get a feel for the fluffiness of the batter. And finally, #4 - Learning to make caramel from scratch at home. This could prove to be deadly. It did take me 3 tries to get it edible, but with so few ingredients and relatively little effort to make it, wow! why buy it at the store anymore? Hello new found calories!

There are a couple things I did not like about this cake: okay, just 1: Cardamom. Did not have this spice in my drawer. Knew we were in trouble when Ben called from the store to see if we "really" needed it. If he thinks something is expensive, we are in deep. The recipe calls for 3/4 of a teaspoon.

Holy guacamole - it cost $11.99. And, the best part, it smells like powdered Nyquil. I used the recommended 3/4 teaspoon in my first batch of caramel and I thought it was over powering.

But, you will see, there were other issues with my first batch of caramel.

My second batch of caramel, I learned my lesson. The color it is when you take the sugar water off to add the cream is the color your caramel will be. It won't change after that. The recipe said the boiling would only take 5 minutes or so. After 12 minutes, my batch 1 still looked like snot ( gross, I know, but I can't think of the name of that glue with the little brush on the lid) and I thought I would somehow ruin it. My second batch, I got to the color and then went maybe 30-60 seconds too long. I only used 1/4 tsp of cardamom in this one and it was still overpowering, added with the burned taste, it was also gross (to me).

I made a 3rd batch of caramel right before the party and it was perfect. No cardamom, and took it off in time. mmm mmm trouble.

Batch 1 and Batch 2. Night and Day.

I also made my first major cake making error from not reading the recipe carefully. You are supposed to fold the flour into the batter without the mixer and I beat the batter to a pulp with half the flour before realizing this. Turned out to be just fine. And the angel cake was great - would definitely make this again.