Cooking flops... good ideas gone bad!

[melidasaur]

Originally Posted by wolf

Unless you were working from a tested recipe, that's probably what caused your angel food cake to fall. The density of the cocoa powder and espresso powder combined was just too much for the egg whites and they lost their loft.

Also, were you using an actual angel food pan, or just a tube pan? Also, that bit about cooling it by sticking the pan upside down over a beer bottle is actually important.

I've made a number of angel food cakes, although not in the last couple years.

I was using an angel food cake pan and the recipe was from a cookbook... they reduced the amount of flour to make up for the addition of the cocoa. I think it was just a crappy recipe. I don't think it had enough sugar.