Home › Directions for Frosting › Directions for Frosting
Directions for Frosting
Beat whites of eggs to a stiff froth, add powdered sugar gradually, beating well all the time. (There are various opinions about the length of time frosting should be beaten, some giving half an hour, others a much shorter time). Or, break the whites into a broad platter, and at once begin adding powdered and sifted sugar, keep adding gradually, beating well all the while until the icing is perfectly smooth (thirty minutes beating ought to be sufficient); lastly, add flavoring (rose, pineapple or almond for white or delicate cake, and lemon or vanilla for dark or fruit cake). Have the frosting ready when the cake is baked; beat the white of one egg to a stiff froth, then stir in ten heaping tea-spoons pulverized sugar (well heaped, but not all that you can lift on the spoon) and one of corn starch; be sure that it is thoroughly beaten before taking the cake from the oven.
If possible, have some one beating while you take out the cake. Now invert a common tin milk-pan, placing it on a clean paper, so if any falls off it can be used again, then place the cake on the pan and apply frosting; it will run over the cake, becoming as smooth as glass, and adhere firmly to it. If but one person is engaged in preparing cake and frosting, and must necessarily stop beating while getting the cake in readiness, it will be best to beat the frosting a few minutes again before placing on cake. As eggs vary in size, some common sense must be used in the quantity of the sugar. Practice only will teach how stiff icing ought to be. In preparing for a large party, when it is inconvenient to frost each cake as it is taken from the oven, and a number have become cold, place them in the oven to heat before frosting. If the cake is rough or brown when baked, dust with a little flour, rub off all loose particles with a cloth, put on frosting, pouring it around the center of the cake, and smooth off as quickly as possible with a knife. If the frosting is rather stiff, dip the knife in cold water. If the flavor is lemon juice, allow more sugar for the additional liquid. It is nice, when the frosting is almost cold, to take a knife and mark the cake in slices. Any ornaments, such as gum drops, candies, orange flowers or ribbons should be put on while the icing is moist. When dry ornament with piping, which is a stiff icing squeezed through a paper funnel, and may be tinted with colored sugars. If the above directions are followed, the icing will not crumble. The recipe for "Centennial Drops" (see index) is excellent for icing. In frosting sponge-cake it is an improvement to grate orange peel over the cake before frosting.
This is the standard nineteenth-century uncooked icing: raw egg white beaten with powdered sugar and poured over a cake straight from the oven. The technique is sound, but the icing is never heated enough to be safe, and that is the point that governs everything else.
- The egg white is never cookedNothing in this method brings the white above a temperature that would kill Salmonella. The residual heat of a cake surface warms the icing enough to help it flow and set, but it does not hold it at a pasteurizing temperature for any length of time, and the icing is eaten as-is. Use a current royal icing recipe built on pasteurized whites or meringue powder instead.
- Reheating cold cakes makes it worse, not betterThe direction to put cooled cakes back in the oven before frosting is about getting a glassy surface, not about safety. Warming the cake briefly does not pasteurize icing spread on it afterward.
- It sits at room temperature for daysIt sits at room temperature -- Icing of this kind is left to dry and set in the open, and the recipe has it ornamented with candies, orange flowers or ribbons while moist, then marked into slices with a knife. A raw-white icing held at ambient temperature and handled repeatedly extends the window in which a small risk becomes a real one. How long a frosted cake was actually kept is not stated here.
- Pulverized sugar was not today's confectioners' sugarNineteenth-century pulverized or powdered sugar was commonly loaf sugar crushed and sifted in the kitchen, without the anti-caking starch of the modern product; that may be part of why corn starch is added separately here. Modern confectioners' sugar already contains up to about 3 percent cornstarch.
- The quantities are deliberately loose"Ten heaping tea-spoons, well heaped, but not all that you can lift on the spoon" is not a measurement that converts. The author admits as much when she says eggs vary and only practice teaches the right stiffness.
- Half an hour of beating means by handThe long beating times reflect a whisk and a broad platter, not a stand mixer. The goal is full dissolution of the sugar crystals, which is what produces the smooth, non-crumbling surface described at the end.
- The inverted milk-panA tin milk-pan was a wide, shallow, flat-bottomed dairy vessel. Inverted on clean paper it raised the cake clear of the work surface while the paper caught the icing that ran off, to be used again -- the same function as a wire rack over a sheet pan.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping came out of Marysville, Ohio, in 1877, compiled from contributions by a large circle of Midwestern housewives, which is why sections like this one read as several voices arguing amiably about how long to beat. The icing is essentially what English cookery came to call royal icing: whites, sugar, and a flavoring, poured or spread and left to dry hard. It appears here at length because frosting was a visible test of a hostess's skill. The flavoring list is a period signature: rose and almond for pale cakes, lemon and vanilla for dark or fruit cakes, a convention generally traced to earlier English confectionery practice. The reference to "Centennial Drops" points to a companion recipe in the same book; the name is usually taken as a nod to the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, though the book does not say so.