A Perfect Summer Dessert!!

When it comes to summer desserts, light and fruity is much more refreshing then something heavy. One of my favorite fruit-cake combinations has always been angel food cake. You can pair almost any fruit with the sweet, light, and fluffy cake. The easiest thing to do is go out and buy an angel food cake and cut up some fruit for the topping, but there is nothing homemade about that! I decided to take on the challenge of making angel food cake from scratch, a more tedious task than I had imagined. The thing about angel food cake is that everything must be mixed very precisely. I like things already portioned out, so instead of making a cake, I went with angel food cupcakes.

I looked up a few recipes, but ended up taking parts of a couple to come up with my own. My fruit of choice: blueberries! With a hint of lemon.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 2/3 cup of cake flour, sifted
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 8 egg whites, room temperature
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1/2 cup sugar
• zest of 1 lemon
• blueberries

This recipe makes approximately 16 cupcakes. Heat oven to 325.

If you don't have cake flour (which I do not) you can use flour and cornstarch as a substitute. For every 1 cup of cake flour the recipe calls for, use 1 cup of flour - 2 Tbsp. Add in 2 Tbsp. of cornstarch.

 

Whisk together the first 3 ingredients.

Mix the egg whites, water, vanilla, and cream of tartar.

 Mix the egg mixture on low until foamy. The turn the speed to medium and slowly add in the sugar 1 Tbsp at a time. Turn the speed to high and beat for 3-5 minutes, until medium peaks form.

*This is the tricky part and where you have to be patient. Make sure the mixture isn't too glossy and stiff. The peaks should fall over when you put your finger or handle of a spoon in the mix.

Add in the lemon zest to the egg mixture.

Turn the mixer off. Add the remaining dry ingredients (powdered sugar, flour, and salt) by folding in 2 parts. Fold as many blueberries as you would like.

Divide among lined cupcake pan. Bake for 15-18 minutes.

You can top of angel food cake with a meringue icing, but I decided to go a healthier route. I mixed a little bit of vanilla extract (lemon would also be very good) into fat free cool whip and topped each cupcake with a little cool whip. Garnish with fresh blueberries.

The perfect end to a fresh summer dinner of salmon and salad.

I was finally able to bring one of my treats home to Pittsburgh for my family to enjoy! My mom made a delicious dinner of salmon and salad. We finished it off with blueberry angel food cupcakes! Perfect on a hot summer night when you want a little something sweet.