Hazelnut Angel Food Cake

ByDavid February 25, 2015April 28, 2021

Grab some fresh berries and serve them up a slice of this
light and airy Hazelnut Angel Food Cake!

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I’ve always loved berries. It doesn’t matter what kind of berry. I don’t discriminate. Strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries. You name it, chances are I love it. (More accurately, chances are I’ll take it and turn it into a berry cobbler!)

When my wife and I moved into our first house in Atlanta, we planted a sizable garden along the sunny side of the house. Thanks to the wonderful heat and humidity in the South, we pretty much just tossed some seeds on the ground and ended up with a pretty impressive garden. We had more tomatoes than we knew what to do with…literally. I remember eating bruschetta topped with fresh tomatoes for dinner on more than one occasion. We gave away bags and bags of tomatoes. And we still had more! Unfortunately, our blueberries and blackberries were a different story.

So what happened to those blueberries and blackberries, you ask? Well, the plants were quite happy. In fact, they were huge. And they were loaded with little blueberry and blackberry flowers. But as soon as the berries showed up, so did the birds and the rabbits. We tried everything to keep the birds from eating all of our berries. We hung strips of mylar off of the fence posts. That worked for about a week until the birds figured out our trick. Then I got serious. I put a couple of additional posts in the ground and wrapped the whole darn garden with bird netting. That thing was like the Fort Knox of berries. But then the rabbits just chewed straight through the netting. I finally gave up and settled for sharing our berry crop with the local wildlife. (By sharing, I mean they got 95% of the berries while we got the 5% that was hidden under the leaves.)

One of the first things we did when we moved into our home here in upstate New York was plant a ton of berry bushes. We have blueberries, blackberries and raspberries all along the back fence. We even planted arctic kiwi (think miniature kiwi), and they are incredibly happy. Arctic kiwi vines often take 3-4 years to produce fruit, though…and we’re hoping this might be the year! The local wildlife (i.e. chipmunks) have oddly shown little interest in our berries. (Well, to be fair, we did try to plant strawberries…but apparently chipmunks love strawberries. They burrowed under, around and over our wire cages. We no longer grow strawberries.)

Needless to say, in the summer and early fall, we’re loaded with berries. But seeing as how I haven’t actually seen our yard in months thanks to the snow, we don’t have a lot of berries right now. But then our local supermarket had a huge sale on berries the other day. I grabbed a basket and loaded up! Aside from eating them plain, one of my favorite ways to serve fresh berries is alongside a piece of angel food cake. For this version, I added a splash of International Delight’s Fat Free & Sugar Free Toasted Hazelnut creamer. The creamer is an easy way to add flavor without adding calories. The result was a light and airy angel food cake with a hint of nutty flavor. My wife called it the most delicious angel food cake she had ever eaten…and I agreed!

This Hazelnut Angel Food Cake is the perfect dessert for this time of the year. We’re all about delicious comfort food lately as it helps us forget about how cold it is outside. But comfort food isn’t always the healthiest option. That’s where this angel food cake comes in. This light sponge cake totally fulfills my sweet tooth…especially when it’s served along with a bunch of fresh berries! Enjoy!