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Glace Au Cafe
Place two ounces glazing sugar in a saucepan with five drops of vanilla essence and one tablespoon very strong-made coffee, place pan on range and sharply stir with wooden spoon until lukewarm, remove and use as required.
This is a coffee water icing for cakes, buns or éclairs, not a frozen dessert. It comes together in a minute and the whole trick is temperature.
- Glazing sugarAlso sold as icing sugar or confectioners' sugar. Two ounces is a scant half cup, sifted.
- Vanilla essenceModern vanilla extract works at the same dose. Five drops is a very small amount, well under a quarter teaspoon, so the vanilla sits behind the coffee rather than competing with it.
- The coffee"Very strong-made" means espresso strength, or a spoonful of coffee dissolved in a spoonful of hot water. Ordinary brewed coffee gives a much weaker flavour for the same tablespoon of liquid.
- Lukewarm is the whole recipeTake it barely to blood heat over the lowest possible flame; the point of the gentle warming is only to loosen the sugar so it flows, not to cook a syrup.
- "Place pan on range"A stovetop burner on its lowest setting, or a heatproof bowl set over hot water. A quantity this small can catch over direct gas heat.
- ConsistencyAim for a glaze that coats the spoon and falls in a ribbon. If it is stiff, add coffee a few drops at a time; if slack, sift in more sugar off the heat.
- Yield and useThis makes only a small quantity, enough for a few small buns or éclairs; scale it up for a whole cake top. Spread while warm and let it set at room temperature.
Glace in French kitchen usage covers both ice and a glossy coating, which is why a title like this can mean coffee ice cream in one book and a thin coffee icing in another; here the tablespoon of coffee and the tiny quantity point to icing. Water icings of this kind, sugar loosened with a flavoured liquid and warmed just enough to flow, were a standard finish for petits fours, savarins and choux pastries in the professional repertoire, and English-language cookbooks of the period commonly kept the French names for such preparations. Coffee was among the usual flavourings for a glaze of this sort.