Wednesday, April 21, 2010

The Great Mocha Almond Angel Food Cake Off/ December 3, 2007


..











I am hosting an out-of-town rerun post for the next few days...Here's a post I love that went up long before I had any readers at all.
 ***********************************************
So, one of my very favorite sites is WineLoversPage.com, (the Forum Kitchen, to be precise)hosted by good friend, great wine guy and wonderful cook and creative mind, Robin Garr. Recently, forum moderator Jenise asked about Williams-Sonoma’s Mocha Almond Angel food cake with almond buttercream and toasted almonds on the outside.

For $59.

Now, we all agree that plenty of people cannot bake and would buy that in a heartbeat. Because really? It looks great.

But the Forum Kitchen is, of course, loaded with people who cook. And who love a challenge. So a few of us have taken up the challenge and determined that we could recreate the cake. I took on the challenge, although I’m no baker.

I liked Rose Levy Birnbaum’s Cake Bible recipes. Someone steered us to the chocolate angel food cake in her book...Then I looked up her Neoclassic Buttercream, too, which she claimed was forgiving, especially when adding flavors.

So I used her recipes combined with techniques from Cook’s Illustrated, which has you not whip the whites to quite a stiff peak.

I added my own espresso and a bit of almond extract to the buttercream. And for not really liking buttercream? I LOVED this.

Then the cake was easy enough...I added half the recommended vanilla and then some almond extract again.

Fold, fold, fold. Bake bake bake. Frost...decorate with toasted almonds.

Mmmm. See the pictures. Taste the cake. Visit WineLoversPage.com Great Mocha Bake Off Thread, too, to see how everyone ELSE’S cakes turned out!

1 comment:

Alexandra Grabbe said...

I love detective work like this and that cake does look scrumptious!