Angel.
September 16, 2018
My angel on Earth’s birthday requires a very special vegan cake. A cake I haven’t tried to make for like 10 years… the elusive, the delicate, the delicious… Angel Food Cake. Yes, I’ve only attempted it once and it resulted in: failure. So before the real day of celebration, here are two more trials–which I enter into optimistically. Because now aquafaba is a thing and there are a couple of vegan recipes on the world wide web these days, unlike back in the day. Aquafaba substitutes eggs in all sorts of ways. Most impressive is its ability to beat into peaks. And whipped egg is the predominant ingredient in non-vegan Angel Food cake. (Though my sister and I once baked my mother an Angel Food cake from a box when we were kids, including the crushed egg shells in the batter–our interpretation of “egg whites.”) And I just happen to have a creepy looking Ziploc bag in my freezer filled with some of that magic chickpea brine. All I needed to do was order a proper Angel Food cake pan and parchment rounds to nestle comfortably on the bottom. Because the right equipment is pretty darn important.
Along with Angel cake stuff, there are all sorts of angels in this post. Because I happen to love beautiful women with strong emotions. Like Laura Palmer when she gets her angel in the last scene of Fire Walk With Me. And I tested this four times in different emotional states… Hypothesis: I cry every time I watch this. Theory: When you watch the (original) Twin Peaks series, you fall in love with Laura, a predicament that every character seems to be within. So when you finally see her like this, with Coop by her side (who you also fell in love with), finally happy, you cry tears of joy. Or I do, at least. Closure is an underrated emotion. It can feel better than what’s being closed sometimes. You probably didn’t cry, but I’m a big fat baby. It also has something to do with Angelo Badalamenti. Holy moly, ANGELo Badalamenti.
I have to see this one in Cleveland, Ohio: The Haserot’s Angel, a.k.a. The Angel of Death Victorious. Her face is triumphant and sad at the same time.
Back to Angel Food cake, I used this recipe first and it failed miserably. But these were happier times, the time I laid the parchment down in the pan, bright eyed and busy tailed.
Aquafaba looks like it needs to go your parole officer and not in the stand-up mixer.
It looked like it may work. Still buoyant and airy in the pan. But why chickpea flour? It had a yellowish hue. Angel Food is stark white.
Sure, sure– the lighting in my kitchen is horrible, but this is what an Angel Food fail looks like. My theory: not enough stabilizer in whipped aquafaba. The recipe below, the second attempt, has more stabilizing structure. Also, it tasted bad. It wasn’t sweet enough and the vanilla barely made it palatable. The second recipe also has more sweetness and flavor. But the thin cake that did rise a bit was far airier than attempt number 2, below. We’ll look at that angel next. 
But first! This angel. (And an interlude: I trudge to go get cold medicine ::sniff:: and more chickpeas.)
This is a very heartbreaking posture for an angel, I think I might have said before.
Next, I tried this recipe and it failed… but less miserably I suppose. Whipping went well.
Paddling in the flour deflated the batter significantly. I believe this was the main error. I will try folding the flour in by hand in my next attempt. Maybe because I had much more dry not using Stevia and using powdered sugar? I’m not a fan of Stevia, but I suppose I can try it out for Angel Food success. 
It looked better than attempt one, but it was gummy and dense and it didn’t rise very much. But I still had a photoshoot with it.
Inconsistent and low rise. Then blueberries stand about a slice awkwardly. Hold on! The post of the recipe I used never even shows a cross section of how their cake turned out… and it’s got a pile of fruit on top… hmmm.
Finally, another favorite Angel. Who I’m pretty sure is my ‘love’ twin, like Jeff Mangum. We love like each other. What a special thing to have in common! I used to think I was the only one.
I’m going to try again, Angel, but not today. I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. No, I just have to lesson plan.