When Magen requested an angel food cake for her birthday this year, I was delighted. Angel food cake is light and delicious, and best of all, requires no frosting or decorating talent! (I’ll admit that I was slightly disappointed that I wouldn’t have an opportunity to improve my pathetic cake decorating skills, but mostly I was relieved.)

I cook and bake from scratch as much as possible, but for some reason I’ve never made an angel food cake from scratch. It’s so different from other cakes, so I guess the process just seems a bit daunting. During last week’s grocery shopping trip, I mustered up my good intentions and bought an extra dozen eggs, but I also bought a Betty Crocker mix just in case I ran out of time… which I did.

Since an angel food cake doesn’t need any icing, the candles were the only decoration, so I knew they needed to be special. We had plenty of the classic striped candles on hand, but I left them in their boxes and hit up a few of my favorite stores in search of some tall spiral candles.

Party City was sold out of spiral candles, so I don’t know what I was missing out on. I liked the shape of the spiral candles that I found at Target, but I wasn’t too excited about the colors. (I am, however, generally in favor of the concept behind Target’s new line of “Spritz” party accessories.) I finally found some candles that I liked at Michaels ($3 for a box of 12). I poked eight of them into the cake and the cake was ready for the party!

I love how Magen’s birthday cake turned out — simple, sweet, and classy.

Have you ever made an angel food cake from scratch? How did it turn out?