Scenes From An Amish Bakery, Part III - Plus Strawberry Angel Food Cake

By Kevin Williams

This wraps up our visit to Yoder's Amish Bakery in Kenton, Ohio, well worth the drive.  If you missed the other two installments in this series you can see them here:

Part I  - Maple Frosted Zucchini Bars

Part II - Scenes From Barbara's Kitchen

On the day my family descended upon Barbara's bakery she was making a strawberry angel food cake for a customer from Forest, Ohio.  She custom-made the cake.  The old adage that the third time is a charm proved true here as her first attempts at the cake resulted in collapsed cakes.  But the third attempt is what you see here, a wonderfully spongy, flavorful angel food masterpiece. SIGH, as I was studying her masterpiece I was also trying to run interference with my 4-year-old daughter Aster who kept asking the Amish children there to play or peppering Barbara with questions.  While the recipe below isn't her recipe per se, it is an Amish one that I have that would create the same cake.

AMISH STRAWBERRY ANGEL FOOD CAKE

Sift together 3 times:
1 ¼ C. sifted cake flour
2 C. white sugar
Mix:
1 ¾ C. egg whites
1 ½ t. cream of tartar
¼ t. salt

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 cups sliced strawberries and then crushed so that you have a juicy, strawberry pulp
Beat egg whites, cream of tartar and salt till stiff. Fold in sugar, stawberries and juice, and flour mixture. Add 2 t. vanilla. Bake at 300° for 1 hour or until done.