ANGEL FOOD CAKE WITH ORANGE AND MASCARPONE ICING

It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago. Every year since I entered adulthood I would go out and buy myself a birthday cake. Well, I would buy a cake. Chocolate tart, Swiss chocolate roll, a small chocolate gateau from Patisserie Valerie.... you see, all chocolate based! So this year I had a change of heart. I did not a chocolate cake anymore. I wanted something else. I wanted something easy yet tasty. As I like baking I thought it would be a great idea to bake my own birthday cake for a change. So after researching recipes for hours online, I opted for an Angel food cake. This is a fat free cake which is very light and airy and only takes minutes to make.

Beat 350 ml egg whites to soft peaks, then fold in 1tsp vanilla essence and 1tsp cream of tartar. Sift 350 gr flour, 175gr sugar and 1tbsp corn flour 5 times until really well mixed. Sieve the mix over the egg whites one last time. Mix it well until all the flour is incorporated (try not to overmix). I do not have a chiffon tin so I used my 27 cm ring tin. You put it in a cold oven, turn the heat up to 170 and bake for about 1 hour 20 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean. You need to cool it upside down for about 3 hours, until completely cold. I used a spatula to loosen it from the tin.

The recipe for the icing was given to me by a very dear friend of mine, Sonya. Her blog http://moetosladkohobby.blogspot.co.uk  has some of the most delicious recipes. You can find the recipe here: http://mysweethobby.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/angel-food-cake.html
Because my cake was bigger, I increased the ingredients for the icing by half.

I made two cakes (one of them was a try out, just to make sure I will get it right for the day). They both baked beautifully and were gone really quickly. I made one of them with raspberry jam and the other with cherry jam. You can use whatever you have in your cupboard, it seems like everything goes well with the orange flavour of the icing. It was definitely worth the effort - my kids are not big on cakes but they had seconds from this one.