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White or Colored Icing
1 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar 2 tablespoons hot milk 1/2 teaspoon butter 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract Add butter to hot milk; add sugar slowly to make right consistency to spread; add vanilla. Spread on top and sides of cake.
If pink icing is desired, add one tablespoon strawberry or other fruit juice. For yellow icing add one teaspoon egg yolk and flavor with orange rind and one teaspoon lemon juice.
If desired, place halves of English walnuts on top of cake while icing is still soft.
A plain uncooked butter glaze of the kind that dominated home cake decorating once boxed confectioner's sugar became cheap. It comes together in a bowl in two minutes; the only real skill is judging consistency.
- Add the sugar, not the liquidThe instruction to add sugar slowly "to make right consistency" is the hinge. The stated 1 1/2 cups is a starting point rather than a fixed amount; how much 2 tablespoons of hot milk will actually take up varies with the sugar. Stop when the icing falls from the spoon in a thick ribbon that holds a moment before smoothing out.
- Sift firstConfectioner's sugar cakes and lumps in the box, then as now. Sifting before adding helps, since lumps are hard to beat out of a stiff icing.
- Keep the milk hotThe heat helps dissolve the sugar and melt the half teaspoon of butter. Warm it to just below a simmer and mix immediately.
- YieldRoughly two-thirds to three-quarters of a cup once mixed, which is a thin coat for the top and sides of a single small layer as the recipe directs. Scale up for a larger or two-layer cake.
- The fruit-juice variationA tablespoon of strawberry juice adds half again as much liquid, so expect to add a good deal more sugar to bring the icing back to a spreadable consistency. The resulting pink from fruit juice alone is pale.
- The yellow variation with raw yolkA teaspoon of raw egg yolk stirred into a glaze that is never heated is not a risk worth taking now, particularly for children or anyone immunocompromised. Skip it and get the colour from a pinch of turmeric or a pasteurized egg product, or simply leave the icing white and rely on the orange rind and lemon juice for flavour.
- Work fast, then let it crustAn uncooked sugar glaze begins to set as it stands and is hard to smooth once it starts. Spread it in as few passes as possible, and set the walnut halves while the surface is still tacky, as the recipe directs.
- Cake temperatureIce only a fully cooled cake. On anything still warm the glaze thins and soaks into the crumb.
Uncooked confectioner's sugar icings became common as finely milled powdered sugar turned into a reliable grocery item, offering an alternative to boiling sugar syrup and beating it into egg whites for a white frosting; sugar-and-liquid icings of this general type appear well before 1900 as well. The New Royal Cook Book was one of the promotional volumes issued by the Royal Baking Powder Company, which distributed such books cheaply or free to sell leavening, and its cake chapters favour quick, forgiving methods. The colour variations here draw on the kitchen rather than the dye bottle: fruit juice for pink and egg yolk for yellow. Walnut halves pressed into soft icing were a common cake decoration in American household cookbooks of the period.