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Ice Cream Filling
Mrs. Fern Gover. 1 C powdered sugar 1 T butter 1.T milk Flavoring Mrs. Leonard Disney.
A four-ingredient butter icing recorded in the shorthand of community cookbooks: ingredients only, no method, and two names attached to it. Everything you need to know is in the ratio.
- The abbreviationsC is cup, T is tablespoon. So: 1 cup powdered sugar, 1 tablespoon butter, 1 tablespoon milk, flavoring to taste.
- "Ice cream" is not frozenDespite the title, the ingredients are sugar, butter and milk: this is a creamed icing, not a frozen dessert. Nothing here is churned or chilled.
- The ratio is stiffOne tablespoon of milk to a cup of sugar gives a paste more than a spreadable icing. Add milk a teaspoon at a time until it just falls from the spoon; 2 to 3 tablespoons total is usually right for a soft filling.
- Powdered sugar then and nowModern confectioners' sugar is finely milled and cut with cornstarch, which thickens as it stands. Period "powdered sugar" was sometimes simply granulated sugar ground fine, so the original may have needed less liquid than yours will.
- Soften, don't meltHave the butter at room temperature and cream it with a little of the sugar first, then work in the rest alternately with the milk. Melted butter separates and the filling goes greasy.
- FlavoringUnspecified. Vanilla, lemon extract and almond were the usual pantry extracts for a filling like this. Half a teaspoon is enough for this quantity.
- YieldAbout 2/3 cup — enough to fill between two 8- or 9-inch layers, or to ice the top of a single layer thinly. Double it to fill and frost.
This entry carries two names, Mrs. Fern Gover and Mrs. Leonard Disney, possibly because the compositor ran one contributor's heading into the next woman's recipe, an accident that can occur in locally printed books. The recipe itself is the plainest kind of American butter icing, the sort that became practical for home bakers once commercially milled powdered sugar was cheap and widely sold; before that, cooks pounded and sifted loaf sugar themselves, and cake coverings were often boiled sugar or egg-white icings.