Angel Food Cake With Whipped Cream and Summer Fruits

Huzzah!  Finally a successful bake.  After two failed experiments it is nice to have something turn out right.  Twice in fact, because I made one and then realised I'd made the horrific mistake of not using wheat-free flour!  So I did it again.  So that's wheat free on the left and wheat-ful on the right.

Anyway, this is a birthday cake for my boyfriend's mum (and the spare is going to the school).  She recently gave me a lovely cupcake recipe book and had commented on how nice the summer fruit topped ones were.  So I knew exactly what topping I wanted to give her cake.  But what to go with it?  After some hunting I settled on something I've never tried to make before: Angel Food Cake.  Apparently it's very good if you're on a diet as it doesn't have any fat in it so really she could eat as much of this cake as she liked and not feel too guilty.  However, there was then the issue of finding a small version, since so many recipes involved 12 egg whites and large-ish tins.  Finally I stumbled across one that is baked in a loaf tin.  Perfect!  A delightfully simple recipe, though I made a couple of substitutions.

Recipe - Adapted from Cookie Madness (a great blog with some fabulous recipes!)

This cake is preferably eaten the day it is made but it would probably only last that long anyway.

Ingredients:

• 6oz/170g caster sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2.2oz/60g self raising flour (wheat free if you desire)
• 6 large egg whites at room temperature
• 3/4 tsp cream of tartar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 180ml double or whipping cream
• Various summer fruits
• Some icing sugar for dusting
• Pink food colouring (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4 and line a 9x5 inch loaf pan (mine was a bit narrower) with aluminium foil.  Do not use non-stick foil!
2. In a small bowl, mix half the caster sugar with the flour and the salt.
3. In a large (metal) bowl, whisk the egg whites until they are foamy and then add the cream of tartar.
4. Continue whisking until you reach the soft peak stage.
5. Start adding the sugar a bit at a time, still whisking but on your lowest setting.
6. When all the sugar has been mixed in, add the vanilla and whisk that in too.
7. Carefully fold 1/4 of the flour mixture into the egg whites with a spatula.  You need to be careful because the flour can fall straight through the egg whites and get stuck at the bottom so make sure you are actually mixing it into the whites.  
8. Repeat until all the flour has been mixed in.
9. Carefully spoon or pour the mixture into the foiled loaf tin and bake in the oven for about 35 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.
10. Cool in the cake in the loaf pan on a wire rack to help keep its shape.
11. When cool, remove from the tin and gently peel off the foil.
12. Whisk the cream with some vanilla until soft peaks form.
13. If using food colouring, drop some drops into the cream and swirl through with a skewer.
14. Put into a piping bag with a large star nozzle (I used a Wilton 1M) and pipe swirls onto the cake.  I did three big swirls and then lots of little swirls to fill in the gaps.
15. Decorate with the fruit and then dust with the icing sugar.