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Mocha Frosting
1/3 cup butter 1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar 1 tablespoon breakfast cocoa Coffee infusion Cream butter, and add sugar gradually, continuing the beating; then add cocoa and coffee infusion, drop by drop, until of right consistency to spread or force through a pastry bag and tube.
Ornamental Frosting I 2 cups suger Whites 3 eggs 1 cup water 1/4 teaspoon tartaric acid Boil sugar and water until syrup when dropped from tip of spoon forms a long thread. Pour syrup gradually on beaten whites of eggs, beating constantly; then add acid and continue beating. When stiff enough to spread, put a thin coating over cake. Beat remaining frosting until cold and stiff enough to keep in shape after being forced through a pastry tube. After first coating on cake has hardened, cover with a thicker layer, and crease for cutting. If frosting is too stiff to spread smoothly, thin with a few drops of water. With a pastry bag and variety of tubes, cake may be ornamented as desired.
A butter-and-sugar frosting stiffened or slackened entirely by how much coffee goes in, which is why no liquid quantity is given.
- Coffee infusionStrong brewed coffee, cooled — the strength of a small cup of drip coffee or better. Espresso works well. Some cooks of the period steeped ground coffee in a little hot water and strained it; either gives the flavour without watering the frosting down.
- Breakfast cocoaUnsweetened cocoa powder. "Breakfast cocoa" was a commercial grade defined by its fat content rather than by alkalisation, though American brands of the period were generally natural rather than Dutch process. One tablespoon is a background note here; the frosting is a coffee frosting tinted and deepened by chocolate, not a chocolate one.
- Add the liquid drop by dropThis is the hinge. A butter frosting this stiff will accept only a few teaspoons of coffee before it slumps, and once it is too loose the only fix is more sugar. Add from a spoon, beating between additions, and stop while it still holds a peak.
- Butter temperatureOne-third cup is about 5 1/3 tablespoons. It must be soft enough to cream but not oily; around 65F. Cold butter will leave the sugar gritty, melted butter will not hold a piped shape.
- SiftingThe recipe does not call for it, but sifting the sugar matters if the frosting is to go through a fine tube; an unsifted lump will block the tip mid-stroke.
- Piping consistencyFrosting for spreading can be a shade softer than frosting for a pastry tube. If you intend both, mix it stiff for piping and thin a portion with a few more drops of coffee for the smooth coat.
- YieldAbout 1 1/4 cups, enough to cover the top and sides of an 8-inch single layer, or to fill and thinly top a small two-layer cake.
Mocha in American cookbooks of this era meant coffee, or coffee with a touch of chocolate, the name borrowed from the Yemeni port of Mokha, long the shipping point for Europe's coffee before other sources overtook it. "Breakfast cocoa" was a commercial grade of cocoa, sold in tins for the breakfast cup and defined by its fat content; its appearance in a frosting shows how readily a household staple migrated into cake work once packaged cocoa was widely available. Uncooked butter frostings like this one were the practical alternative to boiled icings: no candy thermometer, no judging a thread of syrup, and firm enough to hold piped ornament in a cool room.