My obsession with this cake goes beyond words. This cake is more than just cake; it is the fleeting joys of life embodied in baked goods. It is catching fireflies at twilight and letting them go, it is flashing a newly-minted driver’s license to the bartender for your first legal drink, it is a first crush and the first shy brush of your lips against theirs. It is delightful and innocent and as ephemeral as summertime itself feels in the dead of winter. If I were told I could only eat one thing again for the rest of my life… well I’d probably choose something practical like chicken, but my heart would break often for loss of this cake. For the loss of it’s sweet, (appropriately) heavenly, fluffy interior, snow-white and slightly sticky. For the melt-in-your-mouth texture reminiscent of cotton candy, and the way in which you can feel the sugars beginning to melt on your tongue the moment you take your first bite. For the delicately browned exterior, and for the slightly tangy strawberry-filled cream that takes the cake to an entirely new level of flavor, creating a symphony of flavor and texture with soft notes of almond extract against a clamor of strawberries, and a melody of classic angel food orchestrated by a gentle zest of lemon .
The recipe for this cake (not the filling) is my mom’s. That’s not exactly true; it originated from a Good Housekeeping cookbook that is now so well-used the spine is now duct-taped and each time you open it pages fall out in a flurry of well-loved recipes, too tired to hold on to their binding any longer. But my mom has made this recipe countless times (mostly to use up a surplus of eggs from the chickens she and my dad raise), making it her own, and just like my great-grandmother makes the best fettuccine sauce and my grandmother makes the best chicken pot-pie in the world, my mom makes the best angel food cake. It’s requested with fervor, devoured within moments at parties, and each year on my birthday I ask her to make it for me.
Now, I’m sharing the recipe with you, dressed up with my own strawberry and lemon cream filling, and I sincerely hope you try it out for yourself. Homemade Angel Food Cake is not to be compared to supermarket store-bought nor to those contrived from a box. There is simply no comparison. Homemade, from scratch, is superior in every way and only this food could ever compel me to write about it so passionately. So long as you understand the meaning of “stiff peaks” (and if you don’t, I’m sure you know how to google) it’s really very easy to pull together, so long as you don’t mind taking the time to crack and separate almost a dozen eggs. Make it. Taste it. Share it. Try to hold onto it, but remember this cake is as deliciously sweet and fleeting as strawberry season and disappears in the blink of an eye.
