angel food

English

Noun

angel food (countable and uncountable, plural angel foods)

1. (especially attributive or in compounds) Angel food cake, a type of sponge cake made with beaten egg whites and without butter.
   • 1952 September 15, “LIFE”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), page 63:

     The most gorgeous of angel foods. And yet so simple and sure, anyone can do it. Complete — All ingredients, including eggs, are in the package. No eggs to separate. No yolks left over. The package contains more than a dozen egg whites […]

   • 1962, United States Supplies and Accounts Bureau, Baking Handbook, page 6:

     (7) Common Angel Food Faults […] (b) Shrinkage After Baking. Shrinkage after baking may be caused by one of the following: 1. Overbaking the angel food or baking in too cool an oven will cause excessive dehydration. 2. Underbaking or too hot an oven will cause excessive moisture to be entrapped in cake and insufficient setting of structure.

   • 1998, Madeline Babcock Smith, The Lemon Jelly Cake, University of Illinois Press, →ISBN, page 51:

     up Through the years it had taxed her ingenuity to use these yolks, for Antha was always whipping up angel foods. Mama made jars of salad dressing and all varieties of yellow cake and custards, not to mention a supper dish called […]

   • 2003 June 1, Dawn Marie Schrandt, Just Me Cookin Cakes, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 1:

     Angel Food or “angel cake” is thought to be a takeoff of the cornstarch cake and the sponge cake. There are several theories on who originated [it].

   • 2011 March 24, Kari Cornell, Melinda Keefe, The Best of The Farmer's Wife Cookbook: Over 400 Blue-ribbon Recipes!, Voyageur Press (MN), →ISBN, page 216:

     Right that afternoon she took me to her kitchen and there my cake career began, when she began telling me many things about angel foods that I should remember. "The first afternoon I did not do a thing but watch."

   • 2011 June 24, Elinor Klivans, Cupcakes!, Chronicle Books, →ISBN:

     The technique for making angel food cupcakes and chiffon cupcakes illustrates another type of mixing. Angel food cupcakes have no leavening and depend on well-beaten egg whites for their light texture. For chiffon cupcakes, […]

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see angel,‎ food.
   • 2013 August 1, Michelle Misra, Angel Wings: Secrets and Sapphires, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN:

     Rugs were laid out covering the grass in Archangel Grace's private garden and all sorts of delicious angel foods were piled high — cloudberry biscuits, honey sandwiches, towers of rainbow jelly and big jugs of star fruit lemonade.