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Marshmallow Filling or Icing
1 1/3 cups sugar 1/8 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup water 1/2 cup marshmallows whites of 3 eggs Mix sugar, salt and water; add marshmallows and boil until syrup spins a thread; then add slowly to whites of eggs, which have been beaten until light and dry; beat constantly until firm enough to spread. Maple Icing. I 1/2 teaspoon butter 2 tablespoons hot milk 1 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar 1/2 teaspoon maple flavoring Add butter to hot milk; add sugar slowly to make paste of the right consistency to spread; add flavoring and spread on top and sides of cake. Maple Icing. II 1 cup maple syrup whites of 2 eggs Boil syrup until it spins a thread; add very slowly to stiffly beaten whites of eggs; beat with wire whip, preferably on a platter, until stiff enough to spread.
Three icings on one page: a boiled marshmallow meringue and two maple versions, one uncooked and one boiled. The hot-syrup method is the same Italian meringue used today, and the sugar temperature is the whole game.
- "Spins a thread"The thread stage, usually given as roughly 230-235F on a candy thermometer. The recipe specifies no temperature, only the thread; if the icing stays slack, the syrup was almost certainly undercooked.
- Dissolve before boilingStir the sugar, salt and water only until the sugar dissolves and the syrup is clear, then stop stirring. The marshmallows go in and melt as the syrup heats. Agitating a boiling sugar syrup is what makes boiled icing turn grainy.
- "Beaten until light and dry"Whip the whites to firm peaks but stop before they look chalky and start to separate. Add the syrup in a thin stream down the side of the bowl with the mixer running, then beat five to eight minutes until the bowl is barely warm.
- Egg quantitiesThree whites is about 3 fl oz or 90 g; two whites about 60 g. Egg sizes vary, so weigh if the icing seems slack.
- Maple Icing I is not cookedIt is a simple butter-and-milk confectioner's-sugar icing. "Paste of the right consistency to spread" means adding the 1 1/2 cups sugar gradually and stopping when it ribbons thickly off the spoon; hold back a spoonful of sugar or add a few drops more milk as needed.
- Maple Icing IIUse real maple syrup, not pancake syrup, and expect a darker, softer icing. Beating on a platter was presumably a pre-mixer expedient, the broad shallow surface helping the mixture cool as it is whipped; a stand mixer does the job more easily.
- HumidityBoiled icings absorb moisture from the air and go sticky. Make them on a dry day, ice the cake the same day, and do not refrigerate uncovered.
- YieldThe marshmallow icing makes enough to cover the top and sides of an 8- or 9-inch two-layer cake; the two maple icings yield noticeably less.
Boiled icings were a mainstay of American cake-making from the late nineteenth century until buttercream took over, because a hot sugar syrup beaten into egg whites gave a glossy white finish without expensive butter and held up in a warm kitchen better than a fat-based frosting. (The related "seven-minute" icing is beaten over hot water rather than made from a boiled syrup.) The marshmallow here is a shortcut on a shortcut: by the 1910s commercial marshmallows were cheap and widely available, and no longer contained any actual marsh mallow root, the mucilaginous plant that gave the confection its name and had once been its thickener. Gelatin had replaced it. Adding a few of those ready-made marshmallows to the syrup lent the finished icing a chewier, less brittle set.