Angel Food Cake

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F.

Combine one cup of the sugar, all of the cake flour, and salt in a small bowl. Whisk to combine and then sift the ingredients through a mesh strainer, four times. Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with the whisk attachment, whisk the egg whites on medium-high speed. After a minute or so, you'll see that the egg whites start to foam a little. At this point, add the cream of tartar and the orange and lemon extracts while the mixer is going.

As the egg whites start to froth even more, very slowly add the reserved 3/4 cup of sugar while the mixer is still on medium-high speed.

You're looking for the egg whites to get white in color and create soft peaks. This means that as you pull the whisk attachment out of the mixture, the egg whites lift with the whisk but then as they pull away, the peaks fall softly and don't stay in a stiff peak. Notice in the picture how the egg whites fold over on the end of the whisk attachment. If you over beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, this will result in a gummy, chewy texture in the cake.

Once your egg whites have reached soft peaks, turn your mixer off, remove the bowl from the stand. You'll then sift the dry ingredients into the egg whites in FOUR additions, folding gently between each addition. In my vintage cookbook, it specifically says "fold with 10 strokes of your spatula" each time. Make sure you're scraping the bottom of the bowl, as well as the sides, to gently incorporate all of the dry mixture into the egg whites.

Pour the batter into your tube pan. The pan SHOULD NOT be sprayed with non stick spray or lined with parchment paper. Remember, you want the cake to stick to the sides of the pan a bit.

Once the batter is poured evenly in the pan, run a knife through the batter a couple times to help get rid of any air pockets.

Bake the cake for 25 minutes. At 25 minutes, reduce oven temperature to 350 and continue to bake for another 10 to 15 minutes. My cake took a total of 38 minutes.

Remember, do not open the oven door at any point during the baking time.

Once the cake is baked, gently turn the tube pan over onto a cooling rack. Tube pans usually have "feet" or a tube in the middle of the pan that's taller than the sides of the cake. This allows the pan to rest on a cooling rack, while allowing air to flow from the bottom and help cool the cake.

Cool the cake completely, about an hour. Once the cake is cooled, turn the pan back over. Using a sharp knife, carefully cut the cake away from the sides and middle of the cake pan. Turn the cake over into a cake plate or cake stand and pat the top to remove the cake from the pan.

Serve with fresh whipped cream and berries or peaches.

In a cold stainless steel bowl, combine the cream, powdered sugar and vanilla. Whip on high until soft peaks form. Keep cold until ready to use.