Angel cake Angel cake Angel cake (or "Angel food cake"; not to be confused with American Angel food cake) is a type of layered sponge cake dessert that originated in the United Kingdom, and first became popular in the late 19th century. Made with butter, caster sugar, eggs, vanilla extract, self-raising flour, baking powder, and red and yellow food colouring, it consists of two or three layers of sweet sponge cake which is often coloured white, pink and yellow with a thin layer of white cream. It is traditionally sold either in long bars or small slices. The cake has won many
Royal icing to explain that the term was used by confectioners (so presumably it was not yet in common use among mere cooks or amateurs). It developed at some stage in the early 18th century, replacing earlier styles of icing which generally involved making a meringue-like concoction which was then dried out in the mouth of an oven. Elizabeth Raffald (1769) is generally credited with the addition of a layer of marzipan between it and the cake beneath. Piping with royal icing came along a little later, in the 1840s, driven by German culinary innovators. Prior to that, decoration was usually of