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Chocolate Frosting (Cake Walter Baker's Sweet)
1/2 cake Walter Baker's Sweet Vanilla Chocolate 1/2 cup of milk 1 cup sugar, 1 teaspoonful butter, 1 teaspoonful vanilla, Few grains salt. Put chocolate in small saucepan, place in larger saucepan containing boiling water, and, when melted, add butter; then add milk and sugar alternately, stirring between the additions. When mixture is smooth, place in direct contact with range, bring to the boiling point, and let boil until mixture will just hold together when tried in cold water. Remove from range, cool slightly, beat until of the right consistency to spread, and add vanilla and salt.
This is a boiled fudge frosting rather than a stirred glaze, and it behaves like candy: the sugar has to reach the right stage, and the beating afterwards is what makes it spreadable.
- How much chocolateWalter Baker's sweet chocolate was sold in cakes of varying weight, so "half a cake" is genuinely ambiguous. Between 2 and 4 oz of sweet (not unsweetened) chocolate will work; a modern 4 oz sweet baking bar such as German's Sweet is the nearest readily available equivalent, though Baker's sold German's Sweet and its vanilla sweet chocolate as separate products. A whole bar gives a firmer, darker result.
- The hinge: the cold-water test"Just hold together when tried in cold water" is the soft-ball stage, 234-240F on a thermometer. Under it the frosting never sets; over it, it turns grainy and sets in the bowl before it reaches the cake.
- Double boiler, then direct heatThe chocolate is melted over boiling water so it will not scorch. "Place in direct contact with range" simply means move the pan onto the burner itself for the boiling stage.
- Do not stir while boilingOnce the sugar is dissolved and the mixture is boiling, leave it alone. Stirring at that point seeds crystallisation and produces a sandy texture.
- Cooling before beating"Cool slightly" understates it. Let the pan stand undisturbed until the bottom is warm rather than hot, roughly 110-120F, then beat. Beating a hot mixture gives large crystals and a dull, coarse frosting.
- Salt and vanilla go in lastAdding vanilla at the end keeps the flavour from boiling off. "A few grains" of salt is a pinch: no more than 1/8 teaspoon, and probably less.
- If it stiffens too fastFudge frostings set quickly once beaten. Have the cake ready, and if the mixture goes past spreading consistency, beat in hot milk a teaspoon at a time.
- YieldEnough to fill and cover the top of one 8- or 9-inch layer cake, or to top a single sheet.
Walter Baker & Co. of Dorchester, Massachusetts traced itself to a chocolate mill started on the Neponset River in 1780, and by the turn of the twentieth century it was the best-known chocolate name in American home kitchens. Booklets like Choice Recipes were advertising: they gave cooks a reason to buy the numbered cakes of Premium No. 1, Baker's Breakfast Cocoa and the sweet vanilla chocolate called for here, and several editions carried contributions from Boston Cooking School figures such as Maria Parloa, Fannie Merritt Farmer and Janet McKenzie Hill. The precise, fussy phrasing of this recipe -- "place in direct contact with range," the cold-water test, the instruction to beat to "the right consistency" -- is pure Boston Cooking School method, the same school that pushed level measurements into American cookbooks. Baker's also sold a sweet chocolate developed for the company by an employee named Samuel German in the mid-nineteenth century, still marketed under his name, though it was offered as a product distinct from the vanilla sweet chocolate called for here.