Cooking flops... good ideas gone bad!

[wolf]

Originally Posted by melidasaur

You just add a 1/3 cup of cocoa powder and there you have a chocolate angel food cake. I tried to get fancy with the addition of cocoa and instant espresso powder for a mocha angel food cake.

Unless you were working from a tested recipe, that's probably what caused your angel food cake to fall. The density of the cocoa powder and espresso powder combined was just too much for the egg whites and they lost their loft.

Also, were you using an actual angel food pan, or just a tube pan? Also, that bit about cooling it by sticking the pan upside down over a beer bottle is actually important.

I've made a number of angel food cakes, although not in the last couple years.