Home › Cake Fillings and Frostings › Brown Sugar Frosting
Brown Sugar Frosting
Make a syrup of one cup of brown sugar and one-half cup of water. When it will thread when dropped from tip of spoon pour gradually on to the beaten whites of two eggs. Flavor with either vanilla or lemon. Finely chopped nuts may be stirred into this just before spreading.
This is a boiled frosting in the Italian-meringue manner: hot sugar syrup whipped into egg whites. The whole recipe hinges on the syrup temperature, which the original describes only by eye.
- "Thread" stageSyrup that spins a thread from the spoon is at roughly 230-234F on a candy thermometer. Below that the frosting stays soupy and never sets; much above it and you get a stiff, crumbly icing that tears the cake.
- Pour rateAdd the syrup in a thin, steady stream down the side of the bowl while the whites are beating, not into the middle of the mass. Dumping it in cooks the whites into threads of sweet scrambled egg.
- Brown sugarUse light brown sugar, packed, for a clean caramel note; dark brown gives a molasses-heavy frosting and a darker color. Most modern brown sugar is refined white sugar with molasses added back.
- Egg whitesTwo large whites, at room temperature, beaten to soft peaks before the syrup goes in. The hot syrup warms the whites but should not be relied on to bring them to a safe temperature; use pasteurized whites, and especially if you are serving anyone frail.
- EquipmentA stand mixer or hand mixer is close to essential here — this needs several unbroken minutes of beating while the syrup goes in and then until the bowl is no longer warm. A hand whisk is possible with a second pair of hands.
- HumidityBoiled frostings weep and stay tacky on a damp day. On a humid afternoon cook the syrup a couple of degrees higher rather than lower.
- Yield and useEnough to cover the top and sides of one 8- or 9-inch layer cake, or to fill and top a two-layer cake thinly. Spread it while still slightly warm; it crusts within an hour and will not smooth out afterward.
- NutsStir in about half a cup of finely chopped walnuts or pecans, and only at the last moment, as the original directs.
Boiled or "seven-minute" style frostings were widely used in American cake decorating from the late nineteenth century until buttercream became the default, largely because they used no butter and kept a bright gloss in warm rooms. The brown sugar version belongs to a family of frostings built on whatever sweetener the house had cheapest, and it resembles penuche and maple frosting, though the likeness is not evidence of a shared lineage. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and the Delineator magazine, issued cookbooks as part of a broad program of household instruction aimed at the same middle-class readership, and the Cake Fillings and Frostings chapter reflects the period's confidence that a cook could judge sugar syrup by dropping it from a spoon, a skill assumed rather than taught, since candy thermometers were still uncommon in home kitchens.