Chocolate Angel Food Cake

Chocolate Angel Food Cake
MAKES ONE 10-INCH CAKE

This is an old-fashioned cake that requires you to sift the sugar,
cocoa, and flour many times. The easiest way is to use two bowls and
one sieve, placing the sieve over a bowl, sieving the ingredients into one bowl, then repeating it over a second bowl.

2 cups sugar
1/2 cup dark unsweetened cocoa
1 cup sifted cake flour
12 egg whites (about 11/2 cups), at room temperature
A pinch of salt
11/2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon vanilla
Vanilla Custard Filling (see following recipe)
Cocoa (optional)

Preheat oven to 375°F.
Sift sugar and 1/2 cup cocoa together 4 times until evenly
blended; then add the cake flour and sift together another 6 times until
ingredients look homogeneous. In a large bowl, whip the egg whites
with a pinch of salt until frothy; add the cream of tartar and beat with
a wire whisk until whites form stiff peaks. (You may start out the
beating with an electric mixer, but after addition of the cream of
tartar, finish with a whisk for best results). Using the whisk, blend in
the vanilla and the cocoa mixture, adding a heaping 1A cup of the dry
ingredients at a time. Fold in, using 15 strokes of the whisk for each
addition. Turn batter into an ungreased 10-inch angel food cake pan.
Bake 40 minutes, until cake is dry on top and has dry-looking, rather
deep cracks. Invert and let hang suspended, until completely cooled.
While cake cools, prepare the Vanilla Custard Filling, and allow
it to cool.
Remove the cake from pan. Wash the pan. Invert cake onto
breadboard. Cut it into 4 layers. Spoon about one-fourth of the Va-
nilla Custard Filling into the bottom of the cake pan. Place one layer
(what was the bottom of the cake) with the cut side up onto the layer
of filling. Top next with more Vanilla Custard Filling, then another
layer; repeat using the last of the filling on top of the third layer. Top
with last layer (which is the top of the baked cake). Wrap cake and
refrigerate several hours.
Before serving, loosen cake around the edges of the pan. Loosen
center tube, and remove tube and cake from the pan. Slide a spatula
around the bottom of the cake. Invert cake onto a serving plate. Dust
with cocoa, if desired.

Vanilla Custard Filling
MAKES ABOUT 5 CUPS
4 egg yolks
2/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
11/2 cups milk
1 package (\ tablespoon) unfavored gelatin
1A cup cold water
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups heavy cream
In a small bowl, beat the yolks lightly with a whisk. Mix in the
sugar and flour. Pour the milk into a saucepan and heat just to a boil.
Blend in the sugar-egg mixture. Cook until thickened. Dissolve the
gelatin in cold water, and add to the hot custard. Add the vanilla.
Cool. Stir once in a while, until mixture is syrupy. Beat the cream until
stiff, and fold into the custard. Spread the filling on the cake as directed