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Maple Cream for Cake
Two-thirds cup maple sugar shaved, one-half cup of rich, sweet cream beat and boiled, beat the white of one egg stiff, then pour the boiling maple cream over it, stir well. When cool spread on cake layers.
Another Way-Beat the white of one or two eggs stiff. Boil one cupful of maple sugar or maple syrup as you would for white frosting and pour it on the egg and beat until very light. When cool spread on the layers. Very delicious.
Two versions of the same idea: hot maple syrup beaten into stiff egg white, the first enriched with cream. Both are boiled icings, and both stand or fall on the temperature of the syrup.
- The hinge: cook the syrup to soft ball"Boil as you would for white frosting" means 238-240F on a thermometer, the soft-ball stage. Under that the icing never sets and runs off the cake; much over it and the frosting turns grainy and hardens before it can be spread.
- Pour in a thin streamWith the mixer running, add the boiling syrup down the side of the bowl in a slow steady stream rather than all at once. Dumping it in cooks the white into threads and the frosting stays loose.
- Maple sugar, shavedNineteenth-century maple sugar came as hard cakes that had to be shaved or grated. Two-thirds cup of shavings is an unreliable measure by weight, since shavings pack loosely; granulated maple sugar can be measured straight, and pure maple syrup works in the second version.
- The first version is a maple caramelCream boiled with maple sugar takes it toward penuche or fudge territory, and it will thicken faster than the syrup-only version. Have the beaten white ready before the cream mixture comes up to temperature.
- Watch the cream for scorchingMaple sugar and cream together catch on the bottom of the pan easily. Use a heavy saucepan and stir until the sugar has dissolved before letting it boil.
- Beat until it cools"When cool" means keep beating past the point where the bowl is warm to the touch. The icing should hold a soft peak and lose its gloss slightly; that is the moment to spread.
- Egg whiteSyrup at soft ball will heat the white substantially and may bring it close to 160F, but this is not reliable, especially in the first version where the recipe only says to stir; if you are serving anyone who should avoid undercooked egg, use pasteurized whites.
- YieldRoughly enough to fill and thinly cover a small two-layer cake; the recipe gives no yield, so judge by eye and double it if you want a generous outer coat.
- HumidityBoiled icings absorb moisture and go sticky on a damp day. Make it in dry weather if you can, and eat the cake the day it is frosted.
Maple sugar was an important local sweetener across New England, upstate New York and the Great Lakes before refined cane became cheap, and it was commonly sold in hard moulded cakes that a cook shaved down as needed -- which is likely why this recipe specifies "shaved" rather than a weight. Boiled icings of this kind appear widely in American cookbooks in the later nineteenth century, by which time the rotary egg beater had made whipping whites to a stiff foam far quicker than beating with a fork or a bundle of twigs. The two versions given -- one enriched with cream, one plain -- let a household use whichever it had to hand.