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Nut Caramel Frosting
1 1/4 cups brown sugar 1/3 cup water 1/4 cup white sugar Whites 2 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla 1/4 cup English walnut meats, broken in pieces Boil sugar and water as for White Mountain Cream. Pour gradually, while beating constantly, on beaten whites of eggs, and continue the beating until mixture is nearly cool. Set pan containing mixture in pan of boiling water, and cook over range, stirring constantly, until mixture becomes granular around edge of pan. Remove from pan of hot water and beat, using a spoon, until mixture will hold its shape. Add nuts and vanilla, pour on cake, and spread with back of spoon, leaving a rough surface.
A boiled-syrup meringue frosting, deliberately taken past the glossy stage until it begins to crystallize — that granulation is what gives it the caramel-fudge texture rather than a marshmallow one.
- The hinge: watch the edge of the panThe whole character of this frosting depends on stopping the moment the mixture turns dull and grainy at the rim. Go further and it sets hard in the pan before you can spread it; stop short and you have plain boiled icing.
- "Boil as for White Mountain Cream"The reference is to the standard boiled frosting syrup of the period: cook the sugars and water without stirring until the syrup threads from the tip of the spoon. The original assumed you knew the method from the base recipe; it gives no thermometer reading.
- Over the range"Cook over range" simply means on the stovetop. The bowl sits in a pan of boiling water — an improvised double boiler — so the sugar reheats gently and crystallizes evenly instead of scorching.
- English walnut meatsOrdinary walnuts, as distinct from the native American black walnut that many 19th-century households used. A quarter cup is a modest amount.
- Brown sugarUse light brown for a clean caramel note, dark for something closer to molasses. Pack it when measuring.
- Egg whitesThe hot syrup plus the second cooking over boiling water brings the whites well up in temperature, but if you are serving anyone who should avoid lightly cooked egg, use pasteurized whites.
- Work quickly at the endOnce it holds its shape it continues to stiffen. Have the cake cooled and within reach, and spread with the back of a spoon in a few decisive strokes to get the rough surface called for.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; the quantities suggest roughly enough to cover a single layer cake or the top of a sheet cake.