Home › Directions For Frosting › Directions for Frosting
Directions for Frosting
Beat whites of eggs to a stiff froth, add powdered sugar gradually, beating well all the time. (There are various opinions about the length of time frosting should be beaten, some giving half an hour, others a much shorter time). Or, break the whites into a broad platter, and at once begin adding powdered and sifted sugar, keep adding gradually, beating well all the while until the icing is perfectly smooth (thirty minutes beating ought to be sufficient); lastly, add flavoring (rose, pineapple or almond for white or delicate cake, and lemon or vanilla for dark or fruit cake). Have the frosting ready when the cake is baked; beat the white of one egg to a stiff froth, then stir in ten heaping tea-spoons pulverized sugar (well heaped, but not all that you can lift on the spoon) and one of corn starch; be sure that it is thoroughly beaten before taking the cake from the oven.
If possible, have some one beating while you take out the cake. Now invert a common tin milk-pan, placing it on a clean paper, so if any falls off it can be used again, then place the cake on the pan and apply frosting; it will run over the cake, becoming as smooth as glass, and adhere firmly to it. If but one person is engaged in preparing cake and frosting, and must necessarily stop beating while getting the cake in readiness, it will be best to beat the frosting a few minutes again before placing on cake. As eggs vary in size, some common sense must be used in the quantity of the sugar. Practice only will teach how stiff icing ought to be. In preparing for a large party, when it is inconvenient to frost each cake as it is taken from the oven, and a number have become cold, place them in the oven to heat before frosting. If the cake is rough or brown when baked, dust with a little flour, rub off all loose particles with a cloth, put on frosting, pouring it around the center of the cake, and smooth off as quickly as possible with a knife. If the frosting is rather stiff, dip the knife in cold water. If the flavor is lemon juice, allow more sugar for the additional liquid. It is nice, when the frosting is almost cold, to take a knife and mark the cake in slices. Any ornaments, such as gum drops, candies, orange flowers or ribbons should be put on while the icing is moist. When dry ornament with piping, which is a stiff icing squeezed through a paper funnel, and may be tinted with colored sugars. If the above directions are followed, the icing will not crumble. The recipe for "Centennial Drops" (see index) is excellent for icing. In frosting sponge-cake it is an improvement to grate orange peel over the cake before frosting.
This is uncooked royal icing: raw egg white beaten with sugar and spread on cake. The technique is sound, but the egg is never brought to a safe temperature, and the notes below explain why the page cannot be followed as printed.
- Why it fails todayThe whites are never heated. Warmth from a just-baked cake surface will not pasteurize a layer of icing, and the frosting then sits at room temperature for hours or days, which is the condition Salmonella favours. Use a current recipe built on pasteurized whites or meringue powder, or a cooked meringue icing.
- Heating cold cakesThe instruction to put cooled cakes back in the oven before frosting exists to make the icing flow and set glossy. It does nothing for the egg, since the icing is applied after the cake leaves the oven.
- "Powdered and sifted" vs. "pulverized"Both mean what is now sold as confectioners' or icing sugar. Modern confectioners' sugar already carries up to about 3 percent cornstarch as an anti-caking agent, though that is considerably less than the proportion of corn starch the recipe adds here.
- The half-hour beatingThirty minutes reflects hand-beating in a broad platter, as the text describes. The point was to dissolve the sugar completely; a stand mixer reaches the same smooth stage in a small fraction of that time.
- "Ten heaping tea-spoons" is not a fixed amountThe book itself hedges it ("well heaped, but not all that you can lift"). Read it as roughly a third to a half cup of confectioners' sugar per white, with the stiffness judged by eye, exactly as the text says.
- The inverted milk-panA large tin pan turned upside down on paper is an improvised stand with a drip catch beneath it. A wire rack set over parchment or a sheet pan does the same job and lets the excess be scraped up and reused.
- Piping funnel"A stiff icing squeezed through a paper funnel" is a cone rolled from paper, one forerunner of the piping bag. The stiff icing for piping is presumably the same mixture with more sugar beaten in, though the text does not say.
- Flouring a rough cakeDusting a browned, crumbly top with flour and brushing off the loose crumbs is a real trick and still works under any icing; it keeps crumbs from being dragged into the surface.
Uncooked egg-white icing of this kind was a common finish for American cakes through the nineteenth century, alongside boiled icings, before butter-based American buttercream became the usual choice. It appears here in a chapter of "directions" rather than as a numbered recipe, and the text itself explains why the proportions are left open: as eggs vary in size, the cook is told to use common sense and warned that "practice only will teach how stiff icing ought to be." The insistence on frosting the cake hot, with a second person beating, points to the practical difficulty of a kitchen without a mechanical mixer. The Dixie Cook Book belongs to a family of large late-century compiled household manuals that circulated in regionally retitled editions, recycling and expanding one another's text; passages of general instruction like this one were among the most-copied material in the genre.