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Milk Frosting
1½ cups sugar 1/2 cup milk 1 teaspoon butter 1/2 teaspoon vanilla Put butter in saucepan; when melted, add sugar and milk. Stir, to be sure that sugar does not adhere to saucepan, heat to boiling-point, and boil without stirring thirteen minutes. Remove from fire, and beat until of right consistency to spread; then add flavoring and pour over cake, spreading evenly with back of spoon. Crease as soon as firm.
Caramel Frosting I Make same as Milk Frosting, adding one and one-half squares melted chocolate as soon as boiling-point is reached, and flavoring with one-eighth teaspoon cinnamon. 11½ cups sugar
This is a boiled fudge frosting made without cream or egg white, and it behaves like fudge: everything depends on the sugar concentration when you stop cooking and on how you beat it afterward.
- Use a thermometer, not the clockThirteen minutes assumes a particular pan, burner and volume. Boil to the soft-ball stage, 236-240F, and pull it off there; a few degrees over and the frosting sets hard and crumbles as you spread it.
- Do not stir once it boilsStirring a boiling sugar syrup seeds crystals and gives a grainy frosting. Stir only until the sugar dissolves, then leave it alone and wash any crystals from the pan sides with a wet pastry brush.
- Cool before beatingThe instruction to beat as soon as it leaves the fire is the weak point. Let the syrup drop to about 110F undisturbed, then beat: the crystals that form will be fine and the finish creamy rather than sandy.
- "Right consistency to spread"Beat until the mixture loses its gloss, thickens, and holds a soft ridge from the spoon. It stiffens quickly at that stage, so have the cake ready and work fast; a splash of hot milk will loosen it if it tightens too far.
- Whole milkThe recipe predates skim and low-fat milk as everyday purchases. Use whole milk, or the frosting will be thin in flavor and set drier.
- "Crease"Score the surface into serving portions with a knife while the frosting is still soft enough to mark but firm enough to hold the lines. Cutting cleanly through a fully set fudge frosting afterward is difficult.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. From 1½ cups sugar and ½ cup milk boiled down, expect roughly a cup to a cup and a quarter of spreadable frosting: enough for the top of a single cake, and thin cover for more than that.
Boiled frostings like this one belong to the era when household sugar was cheap and reliable but chocolate, cream and egg-white meringues were treated as separate categories of finish. What Fannie Farmer calls Milk Frosting is essentially fudge poured while still fluid: the same soft-ball syrup, the same beating to induce fine crystals, spread instead of cut into squares. The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book grouped frostings together so a cook could learn one method and vary it, which is why the caramel version here is written simply as a change to this base rather than as a recipe of its own. The instruction to "crease" the frosting reflects the habit of marking the cake for serving before the sugar set hard, a practical concern with a frosting that stiffens to something close to candy.