Mission possible: A fast, easy low-carb angel food

BY J.M. HIRSCH
ASSOCIATED PRESS

This cake is easy to love because it is fast and sim­ple to make, is deli­cious and is great for dieters. It makes a stan­dard size angel food cake, but has just 133 calo­ries, 3.5 grams of fat, 23 grams of pro­tein and 2.75 grams of car­bo­hy­drates per quar­ter of the cake. That’s right. Per quar­ter of the cake.

It seemed impos­si­ble. I wanted to make a zero-sugar, low-carb ver­sion of a cake that is made from almost noth­ing but sugar and carbs.

And it took 20-something attempts. But after many dis­ap­point­ing – and some down­right dis­gust­ing – ver­sions, I finally man­aged to bake an amaz­ing and sweet angel food cake that rises beau­ti­fully and has the same del­i­cate, almost spongy tex­ture as tra­di­tional recipes.

My moti­va­tion was sim­ple – Mom. A long­time vegan, she has lived with­out her (and my) favorite cake for decades. But she recently started eat­ing egg whites again, which put angel food back on the table. Except she isn’t eat­ing sugar and is try­ing to limit carbohydrates.

Angel food cake has three pri­mary ingre­di­ents – egg whites, sugar and flour. Egg whites and sugar are whipped until they form a thick, airy bat­ter, then flour is gen­tly folded in. Could I make a cake with only one of the key ingredients?

From the start, struc­ture was the chal­lenge. Using egg whites and the nat­ural sugar alter­na­tive known as ste­via, I was able to bake up cakes with the proper taste. And they would rise beau­ti­fully in the oven. But as soon as they came out, they wilted into near pud­dles of cooked dough.

To get the struc­ture I needed, I turned to two ingre­di­ents pop­u­lar in gluten-free bak­ing – guar gum and xan­than gum. Most baked goods get their lift and struc­ture by work­ing the gluten (a type of pro­tein) in wheat flour until it forms bonds that trap air. Peo­ple who avoid gluten need to find a way around this, so they use other ingre­di­ents to repli­cate those bonds.

The cake still needed dry ingre­di­ents, and for that I turned to more egg whites. A blend of pow­dered egg whites and egg– or whey-based pro­tein pow­der was a good start. A bit of almond flour com­pleted the dry mix, giv­ing the cake a bit of extra body.

A cou­ple things to keep in mind:

• Tra­di­tional angel food cake is made from a very del­i­cate bat­ter. This is why the flour is gen­tly folded into the whipped egg whites by hand. The bat­ter in this ver­sion is much stur­dier and eas­ily stands up to using the mixer to add the dry ingre­di­ents at the end.
• Whey or egg white pro­tein pow­ders are widely avail­able in the grocer’s nat­ural foods or pro­tein bar sec­tions. Look for a brand that doesn’t con­tain sugar. We used Biochem’s 100 Per­cent Whey Pro­tein vanilla powder.
• Pow­dered egg whites are exactly what they sound like. They are sold in the bak­ing aisle.
• The recipe was writ­ten to be gluten-free. If you aren’t avoid­ing gluten, it also can be made sub­sti­tut­ing 1/4 cup cake flour for the 1/4 cup almond flour called for.
• Want to make a choco­late ver­sion? Sub­sti­tute 1/4 cup unsweet­ened cocoa pow­der for the pow­dered egg whites.
• If you pur­chase pack­aged liq­uid egg whites at the gro­cer, be sure they are appro­pri­ate for whip­ping. Some brands will not whip; the car­tons usu­ally are marked to indi­cate this.
• Xan­than gum and guar gum are widely avail­able in the gluten-free sec­tion of most gro­cers. Almond flour gen­er­ally is sold in this sec­tion, too.

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