Angel Food Cake for Boo Radley (#ReadCookEat)

  "Mr Tate went to the swing and picked up his hat. It was lying beside Atticus. Mr Tate pushed back his hair and put his hat on.

  'I never heard tell that it's against the law for a citizen to do his utmost to prevent a crime from being committed, which is exactly what he did, but maybe you'll say it's my duty to tell the town all about it and not hush it up. Know what'd happen then? All the ladies in Maycomb includin' my wife'd be knocking on his door bringing angel food cakes. To my way of thinkin', Mr Finch, taking the one man who's done you and this town a great service an' draggin' him with his shy ways into the limelight -  to me, that's a sin. It's a sin and I'm not about to have it on my head. If it was any other man it'd be different. But not this man, Mr Finch.'

  Mr Tate was trying to dig a hole in the floor with the toe of his boot. He pulled his nose, then he massaged his left arm. 'I may not be much, Mr Finch, but I'm still sheriff of Maycomb County, and Bob Ewell fell on his knife. Good night sir.'

  Mr Tate stamped off the porch and strode across the front yard. His car door slammed and he drove away.

Atticus sat looking at the floor for a long time. Finally he raised his head. 'Scout,' he said, 'Mr Ewell fell on his knife. Can you possibly understand?'

  Atticus looked like he needed cheering up. I ran to him and hugged him an kissed him with all my might. 'Yes sir, I understand,' I reassured him. 'Mr Tate was right.'

  Atticus disengaged himself and looked at me. 'What do you mean?'

  'Well, it'd be sort of like shootin' a mockingbird, wouldn't it?'

  Atticus put his face in my hair and rubbed it. When he got up and walked across the porch into the shadows, his youthful step had returned. Before he went inside the house, he stopped in front of Boo Radley. 'Thank you for my children, Arthur,' he said." 

- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

As you have read, thing turned out that Boo Radley would not get into the limelight and as a consequence wouldn't receive any  angel food cakes from anyone around town.

Therefore, in order to join #ReadCookEat again this month, I decided to have a go at an angel food cake. I never had one before yet attempted to make one. So I had to do some research. One recipe I found was from Mary Berry on the BBC website. It mentioned also it was from The Great British Bake Off. I didn't notice anything ...

So, I didn't want to make a huge cake requiring a lot of ... eh ... cake eating afterwards, so I went one adjusting ideas from the net to my needs ...

Angel Food Cake for Boo Radley:

Ingredients:

75 g flour

180 g sugar

6 egg whites

Zest of one lemon

A small splash of lemon juice

1 tsp. baking powder

Pinch of salt

Method:

Sift the flour, baking powder and 60 g sugar into a bowl, which you set to the side for the time being.

Then start whisking the egg whites in a large bowl for one minute on high speed.

Add the lemon zest, juice and salt and continue whisking on high speed for another 3 minutes. The egg whites should form soft peaks when you remove the whisk.

Now you continue whisking at even higher speed and add the remaining 120 g of sugar on tablespoon at a time until all is in. Continue whisking for a while.

Now fold in the flour and sugar mixture, being careful as not to knock out all the air you whisked in before.

Transfer the batter to your tin you plan to use. Only after I had finished my angel food cake and was ready to eat, I remember I had seen the episode of The Great British Bake Off, where they had to bake angel food cakes according to Mary Berry's recipe. They even had special angel food cake tins. However, I hadn't. So I used a small rectangular tin for it.

Whatsoever the case, bake the angel food cake in the bottom third of your oven at 180 °C for 30-40 min.  I had mine in for a longer time (as I have read in other recipes) and that resulted in the cake to be looking slightly unpleasant around the edges.

Whatever you do, use common sense and test with a wooden skewer whether your cake is ready. When it comes out clean, it is.

After you removed the cake from the oven allow it to cool down for at least one hour. Then you can remove it from the tin and eat it ...

As you see on the picture, I wasn't quite satisfied to eat it like this. I added some strawberries and some freshly made rhubarb and strawberry jam.

Rhubarb and Strawberry Jam:

Ingredients:

400 g strawberries

2 large stalks of rhubarb

175 g sugar

100 ml water

1 vanilla bean

Juice of one lemon

Method:

Chop up the strawberries and the rhubarb. Put them into a sufficiently large pot together with the sugar and the water. Slice open the vanilla bean, add the seeds to the pot and the sliced open vanilla bean, too. Finally add the lemon juice and bring on the heat.

Let it cook and bubble away. Once you are satisfied with the consistency, fill the jam into a sterilised jar. Use it for the angle food cake or to enhance other desserts.

Well, it really has been a long time since I read To Kill a Mockingbird, it was back in school. Hm, this reminds me once more, I am not 20 anymore. Oh, oh, I feel the crisis coming up again. Therefore, I have continue to do some stupid things again or ... some even more stupid things ... things, I've never done before.

But, before I can go over to this I go and link this post up to the #ReadCookEat challenge. If you want to join, too, head over to Chez Maximka and add your link. That will nit only make Galina happy, but me as well.

I hope this post has made you hungry for reading, cooking and eating and you will join us this month ...