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Tutti Frutti Frosting
1/2 cup water 3 cups sugar 2 egg whites 1/2 pound almonds, chopped fine 1/2 cup white raisins a little citron, sliced thin Boil sugar and water until it spins a thread. Beat whites of eggs to a stiff froth and pour syrup over them, beating all until cool. Then add almonds and fruit.
This is a boiled icing — an Italian meringue — with dried fruit and nuts folded in at the end. The hinge is the syrup: too cool and the frosting never sets, too hot and it turns to candy in the bowl.
- "Spins a thread"Thread stage is 230-235F on a candy thermometer. Held above a spoon, the syrup should trail a fine thread rather than dropping in beads.
- Pouring the syrupHave the whites already beaten stiff before the syrup reaches temperature, and pour in a thin steady stream down the side of the bowl, not onto the beaters. A stand mixer running at medium-high handles this far better than a hand whisk.
- Beat until coolThis means genuinely cool to the touch — eight to twelve minutes of steady beating. Stopping while the bowl is still warm gives a frosting that slumps off the cake.
- White raisinsThese are golden raisins or sultanas. Chop them; whole ones drag through the meringue and tear it.
- CitronCandied citron peel, the thick peel of the citron fruit, once a staple of the holiday baking shelf and now sold mainly around Christmas. (Citron melon was also candied in American kitchens, but the baking-shelf article is the citrus.) Candied orange peel is the closest everyday substitute; the recipe asks only for 'a little,' so a couple of tablespoons sliced very thin is in keeping.
- Add the fruit last, and quicklyBoiled icing begins to crust within a few minutes of cooling. Fold in the almonds and fruit with a spatula and spread immediately.
- Egg whitesThe whites are cooked only by the heat of the syrup, which at thread stage is a marginal temperature. If the cake is for anyone elderly, pregnant or immune-compromised, use pasteurized whites.
- YieldThree cups of sugar makes a generous quantity; the recipe gives no yield, but this is more than enough to fill and cover a layer cake.
- WeatherBoiled icings misbehave on humid days, staying tacky and refusing to set. Dry weather is worth waiting for.
Tutti frutti is simply Italian for "all fruits," and by the late nineteenth century American cookbooks were attaching it to anything studded with mixed candied and dried fruit — ice creams, preserves, puddings and frostings alike. The base here is the boiled icing widely used in American cake decorating before butter-and-confectioners'-sugar frostings took over: hot sugar syrup beaten into egg whites, giving a glossy white coat that hardened to a thin shell. Citron, almonds and white raisins were all costlier than everyday storecupboard ingredients.