Angel Food Cake vs Chiffon Cake

One is a staple sweet with an adorable name, the other is its more complex sister, complete with a fancier name. But the names aren't where the differences end, and to prove it, I'm going to compare and contrast these two famous sponge cakes.

(Image credit: https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/traditional-angel-food-cake-recipe)

Angel Food Cake

Pictured above, angel food cake is one of the lightest, airiest cakes you'll ever eat, mainly due to its few and simple ingredients. Flour, sugar, salt, and egg whites are really all you need to make one, and because it doesn't use butter, you can get away with calling it "fat-free."

But why no butter? Basically, it's because of the egg whites. The egg whites must be whipped to soft peaks while gradually adding the sugar, and then the flour is folded into the mix. However, if the egg whites come into contact with any fat or grease, the peaks will collapse. This is why you absolutely cannot grease the baking pans.

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of angel food cake. It's a bit too sweet for my liking, a bit too dry, and I find it goes stale far to quickly to go through the trouble of making it. Fortunately for me, there happens to be a perfect alternative...

(Image credit: https://www.jennycancook.com/recipes/citrus-chiffon-cake/)

Chiffon Cake

Chiffon Cake, pictured above, looks nearly identical to angel food cake, but it has a few key differences in the ingredients. Mainly, it uses whole eggs instead of only egg whites, and also includes oil. These inclusions create a richer, denser, and overall much more stable cake, which means the baker is more free to experiment with what they can add. Many recipes are flavored with fruit or fruit juice, leading to a greater variety than you would get with angel food cake.

I prefer these entirely to angel food cake, but they are a bit trickier to make. For one thing, despite the removal of the whipped egg whites, the pan should still remain ungreased. The reason for this is that the pan gets turned upside down as soon as it is taken out of the oven, so that the cake doesn't lose its height as it cools. If the pan was greased, the cake would just slide out as soon as it was inverted. Of course, you need to be sure that your cake is also baked through before you turn the pan upside down, as I unfortunately discovered once.

Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you learned something!