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Chocolate Frosting III
2 squares chocolate 1 teaspoon butter 5 tablespoons hot water Confectioners' sugar ¼ teaspoon vanilla Melt chocolate over boiling water, add butter and hot water. Cool, and add sugar to make of right consistency to spread. Flavor with vanilla.
A quick uncooked chocolate frosting from Fannie Farmer's filling and frosting chapter, with the sugar left deliberately unmeasured so the cook can judge the consistency.
- "2 squares chocolate"Baker's unsweetened chocolate was sold in blocks divided into one-ounce squares, so this means about 2 oz unsweetened chocolate. Semisweet or chocolate chips carry their own sugar, so if you use them you will need much less confectioners' sugar than the recipe implies.
- The missing quantityNo amount of confectioners' sugar is given because the sugar is the thickener and the cook adds it by eye. Add it sifted, a few tablespoons at a time, and stop when the mixture holds its shape on the spoon; with 5 tablespoons of water it will take a good deal of sugar.
- "14 teaspoon vanilla"A typesetting artifact for 1/4 teaspoon. A full teaspoon would not hurt anything, but a quarter is what was intended.
- Melt over boiling waterA double boiler, or a bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Over direct heat a small quantity of chocolate scorches easily and turns grainy.
- Cool before the sugarThis is the hinge. If you beat confectioners' sugar into the hot chocolate mixture it thins out and you will chase it with more and more sugar; let it come down to barely warm first, then add.
- Sift the sugarConfectioners' sugar clumps in the box, and a lump will not dissolve in five tablespoons of liquid, so sift it before adding.
- YieldDepending on how much sugar you work in, roughly enough to cover a single small cake or the top of a loaf or sheet cake. Spread it while it is still soft; it firms up as it stands.
This is the third of several chocolate frostings Fannie Farmer prints side by side in The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, an uncooked butter-and-water frosting that any cook could make in five minutes without a candy thermometer. Cookbooks of the period measure chocolate in "squares" because it was sold in blocks scored into one-ounce pieces, rather than as a solid cake to be grated. Note also that the sugar is unmeasured. Farmer is remembered for insisting on level measurements and standard cups, but here she leaves the quantity to the cook's judgment of the mixture's behavior on the spoon.