Angel Food Cake for Dinner

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When that sizzling summer sun reaches through the window, grabs you by your “No Bitchin’ in the Kitchen” apron, and shouts, “Hot stuff coming at you,” arm yourself with a Popsicle sword and a pint of ice cream. Tell everyone to get out because tonight, you’re serving ice cream and fruit as the main course, and the base is an angel food cake cloud.

Back when I was a wild, carefree graduate student, spending my wild and carefree nights, reading hundreds and thousands of page-turning literary theory, (the average sentence length was 5,000 words), I would treat myself to angel food cake and ice cream for dinner. Then, when Nate came into my life, he would say things like, “Do you think you have time for a hike?” And I’d look at him and say, “I have time for a bowl of ice cream and a hunk of angel food cake for dinner. My treat.” And he’d say, “That’s not dinner.” And I’d say, “Neither is a Crunchwrap Supreme from Taco Bell, washed down with whatever ‘stage three’ is of your homemade beer concoction that you have brewing in your apartment.” Nate would also suggest a salad. “Summertime salads are often crisp and refreshing,” he’d say.

Don’t get me wrong. Salads are lovely, delicious things to have on hand at dinner time, but sometimes, you just need cake for dinner. So, on the hottest day of the year in the Greater Seattle area so far (It’s like 70 degrees!), I’ve decided to pull out all of the kitchen utensils and whip up an angel food cake—one that I just know will rise to great heights, fall hard, and get stuck to the bottom of a tube pan. However, I also know a bevy of berries can hide a lot of mistakes.

In any case, I slapped together an angel food cake, by piecing together a couple of internet recipes:  Angel Food Cake in a Loaf Pan (for the batter) and Angel Food Cake from Sally’s Baking Addiction (for the baking temperature/time/pouring into a tube pan).

Here are some results and pro-tips:

–The characteristic, super high “lift” of an angel food cake is noticeably lower in my version. In fact, when the cake cooled, and I pried it from the tube pan, I ran around the house shouting, “I did it! I freaking did it!” And Nate said, “Is it supposed to be that flat?” And I said, “When I make it, yes.” It’s like the angels in the angel food cake got caught in a fishing net and swam down in an attempt to escape through the bottom of the pan—much like in the culminating scene in Finding Nemo, where Nemo and his dad shout, “Swim down!” to the fish, and they do, and they break free. But in this case, all of the angels/Nemos just sank to the bottom.

–Cool the angel food cake upside down on a wire rack for about an hour. I’m not sure why, but all of the recipes I read online say the same thing. I guess it’s so that the angels and clown fish can maybe swim back up to the top.

–Cover any pieces that might be “unattractive” with lots of berries and whipped cream. Maybe place a salad in front as a centerpiece or distraction.

In Other News: I have a story out in Anser Journal. This one is NOT scary or dark. It’s about a woman who uses her grocery cart to create chance encounters between people, hoping that romance will ensue. It’s called “The Go-Between.”

I have a drink review posted in The Daily Drunk. It’s also NOT scary or dark, and it is called “Downton Abbey Late-to-the-Party-Old-Timey-Cider Review.”

Your Turn: What’s your favorite warm weather treat?

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Published by ckennedy

Author of the DIY blog: Fixin' Leaks and Leeks. Paper/Rock Writing Consultation, Sole Proprietor.

36 thoughts on “Angel Food Cake for Dinner”

    1. Sure! Thanks:) You wouldn’t know it from my “Results and Pro-Tips” section, but I did keep the cake in the pan and cooled it upside down on a wire rack–but the information I wrote above makes it sound like I took the cake out of the pan first:( I think that step should definitely not be ignored. Thanks for catching it:)

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      1. Continuity. I’m constantly re-arranging sentences and paragraphs because I so often jump ahead in my thinking. Good to know I’m not the only one. 🙂

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  6. Really like your grocery matchmaker. My father told me years ago, to not date women hanging around the raddichio or celeriac, they were sure to prove flighty and insubstantial, just look for someone pleasant who knows how to pick out a ripe watermelon.
    As for a warm weather treat, I love when there’s a big, crisp salad, full of crunchy goodness. And when it’s someone else eating it, at a table next to mine. It makes a nice white noise, to help tune out distractions, so I can focus on my ice cream sundae and getting the salted peanuts perfectly distributed on top.

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  8. Bhel puri! You should try bhel puri, it’s like potato salad, only better. For your sweet tooth, just increase the date chutney.

    Loved the cute angel cake story and the not-dark romance!

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  10. I can so relate to this story. My husband also thought I was crazy to say that we could have desert for dinner when we first got together. We have since decided that it was ok to have appetizers and desert for dinner, although a good hot fudge brownie sundae sounds like a delightful thing to have for a dinner to me, still!

    Angel cake with strawberries is such a great summer treat. Or skip the ordeal of making the angel food cake and just have ice cream with strawberries… oops back to sundaes I go!

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  12. Your cake looks really nice! Too bad we didn’t get to see it dressed up! If it comforts you, every time I bake something, an angel dies. I’m pretty sure!

    As for favorite warm weather treat, definitely a fruit salad with all of the season fruits, orange juice to make it delicious and not dry, and topping it off with a generous scoop of ice cream when serving it! 🙂

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    1. It was really fun to make, but here’s the thing: It tasted EXACTLY like store-bought–from the bakery section. So, if you don’t want to go through the trouble, you can just use store-bought with the same results–but it was fun to try to make one myself. And–thank you for reading!

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  15. “Cover any pieces that might be “unattractive” with lots of berries and whipped cream. Maybe place a salad in front as a centerpiece or distraction” Very interesting suggestions, thank you! I follow the same recipe, and it has the same name

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