Make Angel Food Cake So Much Easier With One Extra Ingredient

There's no dessert more heavenly than angel food cake. Unlike its sinfully rich and chocolatey counterpart, this dessert boasts a bright white sponge, golden-hued halo shape, and light airy texture. In fact, it's said to be "so light that angels could eat it and still fly without being weighted down." Its signature pristine color and delicate constitution come from setting aside the butter and egg yolks, two staple ingredients in many cakes. Angel food cake keeps things sweet and surprisingly simple, calling for only cake flour, egg whites, vanilla extract, sugar, and a little bit of salt. But as with any recipe, there's always room for improvement.

It might come as a surprise that a dessert as fluffy as angel food cake doesn't include conventional leavening agents. After all, as long as they're still fresh, baking powder and baking soda can give cakes a boost by adding carbon dioxide to the batter. However, angel food cake's batter is mechanically leavened. The trick to preparing the delicate dessert is to whip the egg whites into an airy meringue and then fold in the remaining dry ingredients without flattening the perfectly stiff peaks. 

The good news is a little cream of tartar can help you nail this technique without trouble. When added to egg whites, this acidic ingredient can make whipping a quicker process and preserving the stiff peaks much easier. So if you're baking an angel food cake, cream of tartar might be a blessing in the mixing bowl.

Neither creamy nor part of tartar sauce, cream of tartar is a powdery byproduct of the fermentation process that turns grapes into wine and is particularly useful in baking. Its name comes from tartaric acid, which is why grapes are so dangerous to dogs and cream of tartar should be stored on a high shelf far away from any furry friends. When used in foods fit for human consumption, it can make cookies chewy and sponge cake light and airy.

Often paired with baking soda, cream of tartar doesn't technically have any leavening capacity on its own. Instead, the acidic powder works wonders to enhance the leavening process, whether by activating baking soda to create carbon dioxide or by stabilizing air bubbles made through mechanical leavening. In the case of air-leavened angel food cake, cream of tartar can save even the most experienced of bakers from a deflated disaster.

Anyone who has whipped egg whites knows how easy it is for the stiff peaks to fall flat, especially if you have to fold in any additional ingredients after forming them. Fortunately, cream of tartar speeds up how quickly egg whites stiffen and stabilizes a meringue's air pockets by preventing the proteins from sticking together. About ⅛ of a teaspoon per egg white is enough; too much and it might make your angel food cake taste more metallic than sweet.

Since the secret to a fluffy angel food cake is properly whipped egg whites, it's worth paying attention to the temperature of your eggs and essential baking tools. When eggs are cold, the bonds between their proteins tend to be more resistant to breaking; the reverse is true when they're warmer. But because a cold yolk is less likely to burst, it's easiest to separate the yolks from the whites as soon as you pull your eggs out of the fridge. However, for best results when beating egg whites, you'll want to allow them to come to room temperature (between 68 and 72 degrees Fahrenheit) by letting them sit out in a bowl for about half an hour. As with the cream of tartar, warmer egg whites will help the proteins bond better with the air bubbles, resulting in a slightly firmer and more stable meringue.

Before you start whipping, though, make sure the mixer's whisk attachment is also at room temperature. While certain recipes call for a cold whisk, chilling the tool can slow you down when baking an angel food cake. On the other hand, if you plan to serve your cake with fresh whipped cream, popping the whisk and mixing bowl into the fridge beforehand will help you prepare the topping faster. With a final touch of ripe berries, your cloud-like angel food cake — made even fluffier thanks to cream of tartar — will be an even sweeter treat.