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Maple Cream Icing
½ cup milk Butter size of walnut 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 cup maple sugar 1 cup brown sugar Boil till it forms a soft ball when dropped into cold water, then beat for a few minutes until it will spread nicely. Stir all the time it is boiling. Good made either wholly of brown or wholly of maple sugar.
A boiled fondant-style icing, closer to fudge than to buttercream. It sets hard and fast, so everything depends on catching it at the right moment.
- The hinge: soft ball means 235-240FThe hinge: soft ball is usually given as 235-240F -- a candy thermometer takes the guesswork out of the cold-water test. Much below that range the icing tends to stay soft; taken much above it, it stiffens in the pan and becomes hard to spread.
- Butter size of a walnutAbout 1 tablespoon, or roughly 15 g. Shelled walnut, not the whole nut in shell.
- Maple sugarHard-pressed maple sugar cakes are still sold, mostly in Quebec, Vermont and by mail. Grate or crush before measuring; granulated maple sugar can be substituted cup for cup. Maple syrup is not a substitute here, as it changes the liquid balance.
- Stirring while it boilsThe instruction is deliberate because of the milk, which scorches on the bottom of the pan. Use a heavy-bottomed saucepan and a wide, flat spoon or spatula, and keep the heat moderate.
- Beat off the heat, brieflyTake the pan from the burner, let it stop bubbling, then beat until the gloss dulls and the mixture thickens. "A few minutes" is accurate; once it loses shine it will set within a minute or two.
- If it sets in the panStir in a tablespoon of hot milk or cream and beat again. This is the standard rescue for boiled icings and works well as long as the mixture is still warm.
- YieldProbably enough to fill and thinly cover a small two-layer cake, or to top a batch of small cakes; the exact amount depends on how far it is boiled down. Spread it warm and work quickly.
Boiled sugar icings were the standard finish on North American layer cakes before butter-and-icing-sugar frostings displaced them, and they rely on the same candy chemistry as fudge: sugar dissolved, boiled to a set concentration, then agitated so it crystallises fine and smooth. The maple version is a Canadian signature, and it appears in the Five Roses Cook Book, published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company. The note that it is "good made either wholly of brown or wholly of maple sugar" is characteristic of these mill-sponsored books, which were compiled from recipes sent in by home cooks across the country and tended to keep their substitutions intact.