We have moved on to the very challenging sponge cakes. Duh, Duh, Duh. The reason why these are so difficult to do well is because they contain no fat (i.e: butter, shortening) and no to very little leavening agent (i.e: baking powder/soda). So, we have to whip the egg whites to the exact point where they will cause enough lift. However, this specific point is two whisks away from being over whipped or under whipped. Daunting. It also didn't help that our instructor started off by informing us that when making an angel food cake, you can do everything right, but it still may not turn out. We were being set up for failure. I started my angel food cake and tried to be as careful and intuitive as I could. Luckily, I got it in the pan and into the oven without any apparent mistakes. This baked for EXACTLY 50 minutes- no more, no less. While this baked, we moved on to make a chocolate sponge cake for a swiss roll. This recipe was much simpler as it contained baking soda (the cocoa powder is acidic and needs this to neutralize)- so we weren't just relying on the egg whites for lift. This was popped into the oven on a sheet pan and we continued onto a more complicated vanilla swiss roll. Making this batter wasn't the complicated part of this recipe. What was the difficult part of this cake was that the second it comes out of the oven, you must invert the cake onto a parchment dusted with sugar, then invert it bake once again, then quickly trim the edges of the cake, then spread jam over the surface as fast as possible, and finally roll it carefully as not to create any cracks. This needs to be wrapped in parchment "like a doobie" as my instructor put it, and chilled. Ah! Thankfully, I succeeded in doing this as best as I could, with just one small fault- I rolled the cake the wrong way. You were supposed to roll it lengthwise, while I rolled it width wise. Oh well, it's not that big of a deal. Rolling the chocolate cake wasn't as difficult. It could be done once the cake had cooled since it was moister. We filled it with jam, cherry pie filling and whipped cream. Mine was slightly overfilled and therefore more difficult to roll, but man was it delicious! I ate a lot of whipped cream yesterday... Once these two rolls were done, the angel food cake came out of the oven and was instantly placed upside down (I forget why exactly, but it may be to help it come out of the pan). I took it out of the pan once it had cooled, and it was the most beautiful angel food cake EVER! I was so proud of myself!!!!! My teacher was also very pleased with how my cakes came out. All in all, I'd say it was a success! Tomorrow- more cake!

Here are my gorgeous sponge cakes!