Gingerspice angel food cake with
milk chocolate ganache and rye streusel

Keeps Good at room temperature for

2 days un-iced. Freezes and defrosts
like a champ while un-iced! Best eaten
on the day when iced. Chill leftovers
for up to 2 days.

Makes A cake for 8–10 people.

Takes 1 hour to make and bake,

2 hours to hang until cool.

130 g (4½ oz) soft plain
(all-purpose) flour
15 g (½ oz) German gingerbread
spice (page 275)
10 g (¼ oz) Dutch
(unsweetened) cocoa powder
10 g (¼ oz/2 teaspoons) baking
powder
2 g (¹⁄₁₆oz/¼ teaspoon) fine
sea salt
60 g (2 oz) honey or golden
syrup
20 g/ml (¾ oz) cold water
500 g (1 lb 2 oz) egg whites
(from approx. 12–13 eggs) –
frozen egg whites are perfect
for this cake (just defrost
in the fridge and give them
a good hand whisk before
weighing)
5 g (⅛ oz) cream of tartar
380 g (13½ oz) caster
(superfine) sugar
1 × batch Crisp rye streusel
(page 274)
1 × batch Milk chocolate
(reverse) ganache (page 250)
When baking life (or just my recipes) gives you excessive egg
whites … make angel food cakes. Angel food cakes are the puffy
lovechild of meringue and a featherlight sponge, and with no
added fat, one could possibly even classify them as low calorie?
Okay, just trying.

With much meringue comes much sweetness, so here, freshly
ground gingerbready spices or cocoa (see Adaptrix, page 174)
help suppress the overt saccharine.

Let’s talk cake nomenclature: chiffon cake and angel food cake
are both made in a two-part tube pan and have meringue as
a major component. Where they differ is that a chiffon cake is
made with an oil and egg yolk batter base, while an angel food
cake has only a meringue base folded with dry ingredients. Also
different: angel foods don’t rise as high so are amenable to being
inverted on a cake rack, not a bottle, to cool. No bottle ‘hang’
stress with this easygoing angel.

Preheat the oven to 160°C (320°F) and have a 25 cm (10 in) two-part
angel food cake tin at the ready, preferably aluminium (NOT dark
metal or non-stick). Do not grease the tin!
Contrary to everything else you know about cakes, this one needs an
ungreased tin. The cake MUST stick to the side of the tin, especially when it
is inverted, so it stays in the tin to cool. We will cut it out later.

Weigh the flour, gingerbread spice mix, cocoa, baking powder and
salt together in a small bowl and set a sieve on top, ready for the
mixing step. Weigh the honey and water together and get the mixture
ready to heat in the microwave or on the stovetop a little later. Find
your largest mixing bowl.

Put the egg white and cream of tartar in the bowl of an electric stand
mixer. Using the whisk attachment, whip on speed 8 (under high)
for around 3 minutes until the whites form medium peaks. Start
adding the sugar in four equal additions – allowing 20 seconds of