Carbonara and CAKE!

If you're familiar with making carbonara, then you know that it requires like 1 million egg yolks... or in this case - eight. Just for fun:

Chicken Sausage Carbonara:

* 2 teaspoons olive oil
* 2 links of sausage cut up thin (probably should have added more!)
* 2 teaspoons minced garlic
* 2 1/2 cups whipping cream
* 1 cup freshly grated Parmesan
* 8 large egg yolks
* 1/4 cup of italian seasonings (that's what the bottle said!)
* Salt to flavor
* Enough spaghetti - pretty much as much or as little carbs as you want
* 1 breast of coarsely shredded chicken
* 1 small pkg of cut up mushrooms

1. Put oil, sausage, garlic on large saucepan on medium heat to brown.
2. Mixed cream, parmesean, yolks, and seasoning.
3. Added chicken and mushrooms to the large saucepan.
3. Added cooked spaghetti to saucepan.
4. Added cream mixture to the saucepan, stirred, then set the heat on low and simmered for about 10 minutes.

We ate it all... before I took pictures. It was really good!

So I had this problem! I had like 10 million egg whites ... or eight. I had one more egg, so I cracked it open and got the egg white and started finding a recipe for angel food cake. I googled a recipe and found this one at cooks.com:



1 cup sifted cake flour
1/2 cup sifted sugar
1 1/4 cups (10-12) egg whites (room temperature) - I only used 9 whites, but it turned out fine.
1 1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. almond extract
1 cup sifted sugar

1. Sift 1 cup flour and 1/2 cup sugar together 3 times. - which I actually did!
2. Place egg whites in a large mixing bowl. Beat with wire whisk attachment of mixer on high speed until all egg whites are foamy. Add cream of tartar, salt and flavorings. - This was really easy with the mixer - I couldn't imagine doing this by hand.
3. Beat eggs until stiff enough to hold stiff peaks but not until dry. (I wasn't sure what dry meant, but I just beat until it had stiff peaks then stopped.)
4. Add sugar, 2 tablespoons at a time, while continuing to beat on high speed until sugar is just blended.
5. Sift flour-sugar mixture over egg-white mixture about 1/4 cup at a time. (I actually sifted the mixture in! It really wasn't that difficult...)
6. Using a silicone spatula, fold in gently but thoroughly after each addition. (I was worried that there would be huge globies of flour, but it turned out just fine.)
7. Pour batter into an ungreased 10x4-inch tube pan. Smooth top of batter evenly in pan with a wet spatula.
8.Bake in a preheated 350°F oven for 40-45 minutes. (Cake will not bake in this time if your oven is not preheated for 15 minutes before putting cake in oven.) - I followed their tip in parentheses, but I used 2 glass loaf pans and they were finished at different times - not taking more than 30 minutes to cook.
9. Invert pan and cool cake in pan for 1 hour upside down, or until completely cold before removing the cake. Insert a dull knife along sides to free cake if cake is still attached after cooling. (I did this as well - and the loaves came out with no problem... just a litttttle pulling.)

I just couldn't stand the idea of throwing away those egg whites!