Birthday Blow Out

Chocolate Chip Angel Food Cake
Adapted from Ina Garten

This was my birthday cake last week. How I loved it. Cupcakes were on the menu for days prior, but last minute mind change. It was a swell choice.

1 1/2 cups egg whites (about 10-12 eggs)
1 1/2 tsp cream of tarter
2 cups superfine sugar (you can throw normal sugar in the food processor to acheive superfine)
1 1/3 cups cake flour, sifted
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup grated semi-sweet chocolate (2 ounces)

Glaze:
1/2 lb semisweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup plus 1 Tbsp heavy cream

Preheat your oven to 350. Combine 1/2 of the sugar with flour, and sift them together 4 times (gotta put in some serious elbow grease here, people). Set aside.

Place the egg whites, salt, and cream of tarter in a bowl with a whisk attachment. Beat on high speed until the eggs form medium-firm peaks, about 1-2 minutes. With the mixer on medium high speed, add remaining 1 1/2 cups sugar by sprinkling it over the beaten egg whites. Beat this again, on high, for a few minutes until thick and shiny. Add the vanilla, and continue to beat on high until very thick, just another minute or so. Scrape the egg white mixture down the sides of bowl with a rubber scrapper.

Sift one-fourth of the flour mixture over the egg whites. Fold this in VERY carefully with rubber scrapper (spatula, as it were:)). Continue adding the flour in fourths, sifting and folding, until it's all incorporated. Fold in the grated chocolate (this whole process made me sweat bullets with nervousness- don't get impatient and be tempted to stir- hold on to your patience and just keep folding until the flour and chocolate are both mixed in).

Pour batter into an UNGREASED 10-inch tube pan, smoothing the top. Bake for 35-40 minutes, just until cake springs back to the touch. Remove cake from hot oven, and invert this on a cooling rack. When cool, run a thin flexible knife around the cake to remove it from the pan.

For the chocolate gimme-some-calories ganache, place the chocolate chips atop a double broiler (heat-proof bowl over a pan of simmering water) , as well as the cream, and stir until the two ingredients slowly melt. Once it's completly melted, pour over the cooled cake, just drowning it in chocolate yumminess (you will probably have left over ganache- this makes quite a bit).

Serve cake with extra ganache, whipped cream, strawberry icecream, berries, whatever. It is pretty much delicious and I will eat it happily for the rest of my life, as long as the ganache is involved.