Mocha Icing
Follow the preceding directions, adding two tablespoons very strong coffee and a little extra sugar.
A variation rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes you have just read the icing directions above it, and only tells you what to change. Everything hinges on knowing which base you are flavouring.
- Find the base first"The preceding directions" in books of this type usually means either a confectioners' sugar and butter icing or a boiled sugar-syrup icing beaten into egg white. The two behave very differently once coffee is added, so identify which one precedes this entry before you start.
- What "very strong coffee" meantHousehold coffee in books of this kind was generally drip or boiled rather than espresso, so "very strong" most likely means brewed coffee made stronger than usual rather than a concentrate. Two tablespoons of modern espresso may read as noticeably more bitter; brewed coffee cooled to room temperature is probably closer to the intent.
- Balancing the liquidThe "little extra sugar" most likely offsets the two tablespoons of added liquid as much as it sweetens. For a butter icing, expect to add something in the region of a quarter to half a cup of sifted confectioners' sugar, going by feel until the icing holds a soft peak again.
- Adding coffee to a boiled icingIf the base is a syrup-and-egg-white meringue icing, beat the coffee in at the very end, a teaspoon at a time, once the mixture has cooled and thickened. Added early or all at once it will slacken the foam and the icing will not set.
- Instant coffee as an alternativeA teaspoon of instant espresso powder dissolved in a teaspoon of hot water gives strong coffee flavour with far less liquid, which reduces or avoids the sugar correction.
- YieldNot stated here; assume the yield of the preceding icing recipe, whatever that is.
Mocha as a flavour name comes from the Yemeni port of al-Mukha, which for centuries was the shipping point for the coffee trade; by the late nineteenth century "Mocha" on an American or British menu had drifted from a specific bean to a general label for coffee flavouring, and in confectionery it came to imply coffee, sometimes coffee with a little chocolate. Mocha icing and mocha cake were common on the late Victorian and Edwardian tea table. The recipe's brevity is characteristic of the genre: a compiler would set down one full icing method and then run a short column of variations beneath it, trusting the reader to work upward on the page.