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Sugar Glaze
1 cup powdered sugar 1 tablespoon lemon juice 1 tablespoon boiling water Beat hard until smooth and semi-transparent. Spread on cake as soon as taken from oven.
A thin water icing of the sort that soaks into a warm cake rather than sitting on a cool one. The only real technique is getting it smooth before it touches the cake.
- Spread it hotThe instruction to glaze the cake straight from the oven is the point of the recipe: heat thins the icing so it sinks slightly into the crumb and then sets to a faint sheen. On a cooled cake the same glaze stays opaque and sits on top in ridges.
- Powdered sugarRead here as the fine confectioners' grade (sold as 10X in the United States, icing sugar in Britain), though older books sometimes used "powdered" for a coarser grind. American confectioners' sugar usually carries a little cornstarch as an anti-caking agent, which may add a trace of body to the set glaze.
- Sift firstConfectioners' sugar packs into hard lumps in the bag and will not beat out with only two tablespoons of liquid. Sift or whisk it before adding the lemon juice and water if you want the promised smooth, semi-transparent finish.
- Boiling water, not warmThe water is specified boiling because it dissolves the sugar crystals rather than merely wetting them. Add it last and beat immediately.
- ConsistencyOne cup of sugar to two tablespoons of liquid gives a stiff, spreadable glaze rather than a pouring one, which is why the recipe says spread. Humidity and how firmly the sugar was packed both shift this, so adjust by a few drops of water or a spoonful more sugar.
- YieldA small quantity, roughly enough for the top of a single-layer cake or a loaf. It does not go far on a two-layer cake.
- TimingMix the glaze while the cake bakes. It crusts on standing, and beating a crusted glaze again can work dried flecks back into it.
Water icings like this one are the plainest of the sugar coatings: the thing to make when there is no butter to spare and no time to cook a syrup to the thread stage. The lemon juice flavors a glaze that would otherwise taste of nothing but sweetness, and acid is generally held to discourage the sugar from setting grainy.