Chocolate Angel Food Cake

I made this for two reasons today. One, my mother's recipe book had an angel food recipe with ingredients and no directions; two it is Jim's birthday today and his mother used to make him a chocolate angel food cake with peanut butter frosting for his birthday every year. So it's a tradition. Both my sons love this cake also and we generally only have it for Jim's birthday. I was a little nervous to do this from scratch because I have usually done if with a box cake mix, but decided to try. I first had to find my angel food cake pan, using it only once a year it gets put away and I usually have to figure out where I stashed it from the year before. While I was looking for the cake pan, I put the dozen eggs on the counter to start warming them to room temperature. Egg whites beat up quicker when warm than if they are cold. I wasn't sure of the purpose of the Cream of Tartar in the recipe was for, but after some research it is to help the egg whites beat up better and give them more stability. I than had to search for another recipe because my mother's didn't have any directions and although she knew how to do this, I did not. The other recipe's called for superfine sugar or regular sugar put through a food processor to make it superfine. My mother's recipe said to sift the sugar five times. I was thinking of putting the sugar through the food processor, but decided to go the sifting route. It did seem to work a little. The sifted sugar was a little finer than the regular sugar. I than measured out all of the other ingredients before I started separating and mixing the eggs. My mother's recipe, as well as the other recipe's called for cake flour. I did purchase some because I know that cake flour works better for baking, although I usually don't purchase this extra for my regular baking. I did pretty well at separating the eggs with just the egg shell and moving the yolk back and forth. I only had a few shell pieces in the egg whites which I was able to retrieve. No crunchy angel food cake for Jim! The other recipe's stated to beat the eggs to medium peak. Now, I know what soft peak is (the peak bends over when the beater is lifted out of the egg white) and I know what hard peak is (the peak keeps standing up when the beater is lifted out of the egg white), but didn't know what medium peak was. Even googling it did not help and couldn't find a suitable example or definition, so I winged it. After the egg whites were ready I folded in the extra sugar, flour and cocoa and put it in the pan to bake. It came out of the oven looking beautiful and I put it upside down to cool-on a full beer bottle of course-which is what my mother used to do. The cake is a little denser than what I've tasted from the store, but still very good. Especially with the peanut butter frosting. I was thinking this was going to be more difficult to make, but it was more putzy than difficult and I would do it again. Although you end up with 12 egg yolks to pitch unless you save them for breakfast and a really cholesterol filled breakfast. I fried mine up and fed them to our dog. He needs the extra calories going into winter.