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Chocolate Frosting II
1¾ cups sugar ¾ cup hot water 4 squares chocolate, melted 1/2 teaspoon vanilla Boil sugar and water, without stirring, until syrup will thread when dropped from tip of spoon. Pour syrup gradually on melted chocolate, and continue beating until of right consistency to spread; then add flavoring.
A poured fondant-style frosting: hot sugar syrup beaten into melted unsweetened chocolate. The syrup temperature is the whole recipe.
- Thread stage"Will thread when dropped from tip of spoon" is roughly 230-234F on a thermometer. Below that the frosting stays soupy; much above it and it sets hard before you can spread it.
- Squares of chocolateA square meant one ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate. Four squares is 4 oz. Modern bars are not always scored the same way, so weigh rather than count.
- Measurements as printedThe sugar and water quantities have lost their fractions in this printing. The water is three-quarters of a cup, and by the same convention the sugar reads as one and three-quarters cups.
- Do not stir the syrupStirring while it boils drags sugar crystals down from the pan sides and the frosting turns grainy. Wash the sides down once with a wet brush at the start and then leave it alone.
- Add the syrup slowlyA thin stream onto the melted chocolate, beating constantly, keeps the emulsion smooth. Dumping it in gives a stiff, separated mass.
- Flavoring lastVanilla goes in after beating because the alcohol carrying the flavor boils off in hot syrup.
- Working time and yieldThe recipe gives no yield; the quantities suggest roughly enough for the top and sides of a layer cake. It firms as it cools, so spread while it still flows; if it tightens, set the bowl briefly over warm water.
Fannie Farmer's frosting chapter includes both uncooked confectioners' sugar mixtures and boiled-syrup frostings like this one, which depend on controlling sugar crystallization. Before household thermometers were common, cooks judged the syrup by eye and hand, and the Boston Cooking-School's habit of describing those stages in words was part of its larger project of making cookery teachable rather than intuitive. Unsweetened chocolate sold in stamped one-ounce squares was a standard American baking format by the late nineteenth century, which is why many recipes of this era count chocolate rather than weighing it.