Home made angelfood cake with strawberries

I picked up a carton of fresh strawberries in town the other day, so tonight, for dessert, I cam going to make dad angel food cake with strawberry topping and Cool Whip.

Angelfood Cake

1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup flour
1 tsp cream of tartar
1/4 tsp salt
12 egg whites - room temperature
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 325 F. (163 C)

Sift together 3/4 cup sugar and the 1 cup of flour, set aside.

Separate eggs into a small bowl one at a time, discard yolk or save for another recipe. Pour egg whites into a large deep mixing bowl. Work one at a time so that you will not dilute egg whites already separated if you break a yolk on accident.

Once you have 12 egg whites in your bowl, sprinkle cream of tartar and salt over the egg whites and beat with a whisk (or rotary beaters) until they reach the soft peak stage.

Soft Peak = when beater is lifted the egg whites lift up in a softened peak, then flow smoothly back down in on itself. (Hard peak = it will remain in a peak.)

Alternately sift sugar in a little at a time, and fold it into the egg whites. Repeat with flour mixture. Go slow and gently fold, do not stir or mix.

Fold in vanilla and gently pour batter into an ungreased angel food cake pan.

Bank 1 1/2 hours or until top is lightly tanned and cake has pulled gently away from the sides of the pan. Invert on cooling rack and leave to cool completely.

When cake has cooled, loosen sides with a cake spatula and separate pan. Loosen bottom and remove cake from pan liner.

Angel food cake is best cut using two forks to gently pry sections apart, or can be cut using a serrated knife such as a bread knife in a gentle sawing motion.


Topping:

3 cups fresh strawberries
1/4 cup sugar

Dice strawberries and dump into a bowl. Add sugar and mash gently with a fork, stirring as you mash to mix well. Set aside.

Prepare slices of angel food cake on plates. Spoon strawberry mixture over the slices of angel food cake and top with whip cream. Garnish with sliced strawberries.