Filling
Melt one half pound marshmallows. Cook one cup sugar and one third cup boiling water until, when dropped from tip of a spoon, a thread is formed. Pour slowly on to melted marshmallows, add one half teaspoon vanilla, and beat until thick enough to spread. Put between and on top of cakes. Sprinkle with chopped nuts, raisins, cherries and angelica. This may be made in one large cake or cut in small ones the shape of dominoes and decorated in the same way. See colored illustration, Plate XVI, opposite.
This is a marshmallow frosting: a hot sugar syrup beaten into melted marshmallows until it holds a shape. It behaves like a seven-minute icing but is far more forgiving, since the marshmallows already carry gelatin and stabilizer.
- The hinge: syrup temperature"A thread is formed" is the thread stage, 230-235F on a candy thermometer. Below that the filling stays runny and soaks into the cake; much above it and the icing sets hard and grainy before you finish spreading.
- Melting the marshmallowsUse a double boiler or a bowl over barely simmering water and stir often. Direct heat scorches the sugar and gelatin, and the icing turns tan and tastes of caramel rather than vanilla.
- Quantities in modern packagesHalf a pound is 8 oz, roughly 32 large marshmallows or about 4 1/2 to 5 cups of the miniature kind. One third cup of boiling water with one cup sugar is a stiff syrup; measure the water before it boils away.
- Pour slowly, and keep beatingAdd the hot syrup in a thin stream against the side of the bowl with the mixer running. Dumping it in at once seizes the melted marshmallow into strings. A stand mixer takes five to eight minutes to reach spreading thickness.
- AngelicaCandied stems of Angelica archangelica, sold in bright green lengths and once standard in decorating boxes. It is hard to find now; candied citron, candied lime peel or thin strips of green candied cherry stand in for the color.
- Working timeThe icing firms as it cools and will not spread smoothly once cold. Have the cake layers ready and level before you start the syrup, and spread while the mixture is still warm.
- YieldEnough to fill and top a two-layer 8- or 9-inch cake, or to cover a sheet cake cut into the domino shapes the recipe describes.
- The domino ideaCut a cooled sheet cake into rectangles, ice all sides, then set the nuts, raisins or cherry bits as dots. Trim the edges of the sheet first, since the soft icing will not disguise a ragged corner.
Lowney's Cook Book was compiled by Maria Willett Howard and published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, which explains both the generous use of confectionery in the dessert section and the color plates this entry refers the reader to. Marshmallow confections were newly cheap and ubiquitous in the first decade of the twentieth century: the older French pâte de guimauve, thickened with the mucilage of the marshmallow root, had given way to commercial gelatin-and-corn-syrup candies sold by the pound, and cookbooks quickly found uses for them beyond eating out of hand. Melting them into a boiled sugar syrup gave home cooks a glossy white icing without the fuss of beating egg whites over heat. The decorating instructions, with their nuts, raisins, cherries and green angelica arranged in domino spots, belong to the same period taste for small, brightly finished fancy cakes served at afternoon teas and card parties.