Angel Food Cupcakes with Maple Cream

Week 480, and the tomatoes ripening, the corn arriving, the garden in full production, the heat in the kitchen. I am 68 years old and the days have a rhythm now — the morning writing, the afternoon visits to Cedarhurst, the evening cooking, the weekly blog post — and the rhythm is the structure, and the structure is the sanity, and the sanity is required because the rest of it, the losing and the loving and the carrying, requires a sane woman at the helm, and I am sane, mostly, except when I cry in the car in the Cedarhurst parking lot, which is not insanity but its opposite: the specific, targeted release of emotion in a contained space, which is the most rational thing I do all week.

Fourth of July; flag cake; Grandma Rosen potato salad; noise of family. These are the facts of the week, the data points, the things I would put in a report if I were writing a report, which I am not — I am writing a life, and the life includes the facts but is not limited to them, because the life also includes the way the kitchen smells at six in the morning when the coffee is brewing and the challah is rising and the house is quiet and the quiet is both the grief and the peace, simultaneously, and the simultaneous is the condition, the permanent condition of a woman who is 68 and alone and not alone, who is a grandmother and a wife and a writer and a cook and a caregiver and all of these things at once, always at once, braided together like the challah.

I made potato salad and flag cake this week — because it was what the week needed, because the week always needs something and the something is always food, and the food is always the answer, and the answer is always the kitchen, and the kitchen is always mine, and the mine-ness of the kitchen is the one thing that has not changed in sixty-seven years of living, from Sylvia's kitchen on the Grand Concourse to this kitchen in Oceanside where I stand every morning and every evening and many of the hours in between, making the food that is the chain, that is the love, that is the thing I do when I don't know what else to do, which is always, and especially now.

I brought food to Marvin at the usual time. The visit was what visits are now — quiet, steady, the feeding by hand when necessary, the reading aloud always, the holding of the hand that may or may not know it is being held but that is warm and alive and present, which is the definition of love in this particular year: warm and alive and present. He ate what I brought. He received what I gave. The receiving is the relationship. The receiving is the vow. In sickness and in health, in recognition and in forgetting, in the recliner and in the kitchen, the receiving is the marriage, and the marriage continues, one container at a time, one visit at a time, one day at a time, at two o'clock, every day, because the chain does not break.

The flag cake is not negotiable — it never has been, not in sixty-seven years of Fourth of July kitchens, and it will not become negotiable now. This year I made it in cupcake form, individual flags for individual people, each one its own small declaration, and the maple cream on top is sweeter than the whipped cream Sylvia used but carries the same intention: something festive, something beautiful, something that says we are still here, we are still celebrating, the chain does not break. If you are looking for the recipe that got me through this particular week, this is it — the one I made for the noise of family, and the one I will make again next year, because the Fourth requires it, and the kitchen answers.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 18 min | Total Time: 38 min | Servings: 12

Ingredients

1 cup cake flour, sifted
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar, divided
12 large egg whites, room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
For the Maple Cream:
1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream, cold
3 tablespoons pure maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Fresh blueberries and sliced strawberries, for topping (optional, for flag decoration)

Instructions

Preheat — and prepare your pan. Heat your oven to 350°F. Line a standard 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners. Do not grease — angel food batter needs to cling to the sides to rise properly.
Sift the dry ingredients. Whisk together the cake flour and 3/4 cup of the sugar in a medium bowl, sifting at least twice until very light and combined. Set aside.
Whip the egg whites. In the clean bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the egg whites on medium speed until foamy, about 2 minutes. Add the cream of tartar and salt. Increase speed to medium-high and beat until soft peaks form.
Add the remaining sugar. With the mixer running, gradually stream in the remaining 3/4 cup sugar, one tablespoon at a time. Continue beating until stiff, glossy peaks form. Beat in the vanilla and almond extracts.
Fold in the flour mixture. Sift the flour-sugar mixture over the egg whites in three additions, folding gently with a large rubber spatula each time. Use slow, deliberate strokes — deflating the whites will flatten your cupcakes.
Fill and bake. Spoon the batter into the prepared liners, filling each about 3/4 full. Bake 16 to 18 minutes, until the tops are lightly golden and spring back when gently pressed. Do not open the oven before 16 minutes.
Cool completely. Allow cupcakes to cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack and cool fully before topping — at least 30 minutes.
Make the maple cream. Beat the cold heavy cream in a chilled bowl with a hand mixer or stand mixer until soft peaks form. Add the maple syrup and vanilla extract and continue beating until the cream holds firm, billowy peaks. Do not over-beat.
Top and serve. Pipe or spoon the maple cream generously onto each cooled cupcake. Arrange blueberries in one corner and fanned strawberry slices across the top to create a small flag pattern, if desired. Serve the same day for best texture.

Nutrition (per serving)

Angel Food Cupcakes with Maple Cream — The Flag Cake That Carries the Fourth Forward