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Chocolate Frosting (Square of Baker's Premium No)
1 square of Baker's Premium No. 1 Chocolate, Pinch of salt, 5 tablespoonfuls of boiling water, 1 teaspoonful of vanilla, About 3 cups of sifted confectioner's sugar.
Melt chocolate in bowl over tea-kettle, add water, salt and vanilla, and when smooth add the sugar, and beat until very glossy. Make the frosting stiff enough to spread without using a wet knife. It will keep indefinitely.
A simple water-and-sugar chocolate icing, of the type made before butter frostings took over American cake decorating. Two things in it need translating: the chocolate and the heat source.
- What a "square" isBaker's Premium No. 1 was unsweetened chocolate sold in one-ounce squares scored from a bar. Use 1 oz of plain unsweetened baking chocolate, weighed rather than counted, since modern bars are not always scored into one-ounce pieces. Do not substitute semisweet or the frosting will be cloying, since the sugar is already doing all the sweetening.
- "Melt chocolate in bowl over tea-kettle"This is a makeshift double boiler: a bowl set over the steam of a kettle on the range. A heatproof bowl over an inch of barely simmering water does the same thing. Keep the bowl clear of the water and keep stray drops out until you add the measured boiling water.
- The water is measured, not incidentalFive tablespoonfuls is a scant third of a cup, and it is the only liquid in the frosting. Add it hot and all at once, stirring until the mixture is smooth before any sugar goes in; adding cold water to melted chocolate can seize it.
- About the sugarThree cups of sifted confectioner's sugar is roughly 10 to 12 oz by weight, depending how lightly it is sifted. Sift it — period powdered sugar lumped badly, and modern sugar with cornstarch still does. Hold back the last half cup and add it only as needed to reach spreading consistency.
- Beating until glossyThe shine is the point and the test. Beat vigorously by hand or with a mixer on medium for a couple of minutes after the sugar is in; underbeaten, it dries dull and grainy.
- Consistency and the wet knifeA wet knife was the usual remedy for frosting that would not spread cleanly; the instruction is simply that this one should be thick enough not to need it. If it stiffens while you work, a teaspoon of boiling water at a time loosens it again.
- "It will keep indefinitely"Read that as a claim about spoilage, not quality: sugar, water and chocolate with no dairy or egg is not a hospitable medium. It will, however, crust and harden in a day or two. Store it covered airtight and rewarm gently over hot water, beating in a little boiling water, before spreading.
Choice Recipes was one of the pamphlet cookbooks the Walter Baker & Co. chocolate works of Dorchester, Massachusetts, gave away and sold cheaply from the late nineteenth century onward — advertising in the form of a kitchen reference, with the company's product named in nearly every ingredient list. "Premium No. 1" was Baker's grade of plain unsweetened chocolate, distinct from the breakfast cocoa and the sweetened German's Sweet Chocolate the firm also sold, and the one-ounce square long remained the standard American unit for baking chocolate. A frosting built on boiling water and confectioner's sugar rather than butter and cream suits the same period logic: it kept without refrigeration in a house that might not have any, and finely milled powdered sugar was by then widely available.