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How to Ice Cakes

From The Picayune Creole cook book (1922).

Source and licence

From The Picayune Creole cook book (1922), printed page 272, digitised by the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/picayunecreolec00unkngoog

Read the original public domain per archive.org metadata; unverified

What was changed: Read by machine from the book's scanned text into ingredients and method. The title's capitals were tidied; spelling and scanning errors are left as they are.

United States. Associated with United States by the book is about Creole cookery; the recipe itself names no place (confidence 0.4). "Associated with" means only that the evidence named here links this recipe to that place. A recipe isn't labelled as representing an entire country because a source associates it with one, and regional origins are kept where the source gives them.

From an old book: a historical recipe, not current advice. Its methods, additives and storage may be unsafe by today's standards.

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Ingredients

Method

  1. Take one pound of pulverized sugar and the whites of two eggs which have been in the refrigerator for about &n hour before using.
  2. Beat the egg^s and the sugar and a teaspoonful of rose or orange flower water or vanilla essence together till the eggs are very light.
  3. In commencing to beat do not beat the whites separately.
  4. Break them into a cold, shallow dish, and throw in a handful of sugar at a time, beating meanwhile, and adding at short intervals, till you have used up all the sugar.
  5. Or beat the whites and the sugar and essence together.
  6. When the mixture is stiff and smooth, begin to lay a thin coating of icing over the cake, using a knife to spread it, and occasionally dipping the knife Into the lemon Juice, which will enable you to smooth it nicely.
  7. When it is covered with this first coat, set in a warm place to harden — or in a moderate oven, where you may let it remain about four minutes, or in the sunshine where there is no dust around.
  8. When it is hardened it will be ready for the next coat.
  9. Proceed as above.
  10. This coat will be much smoother and whiter than the first.
  11. Let the thickness of the icing always be such that it will run slowly.
  12. When the icing is well prepared this will give a smooth, glossy surface.
  13. Instead of the essence, the Juice of a lemon (one tablespoonful) may be added to the icing.
  14. If you wish to use ornaments, secure a piping tube, and place the ornaments around the cake while moist, running a plain tube around the edge of the cake, and then covering the cake with a thin icing level with the rim.
  15. Let it run smooth, and dry in the sun or in the oven.
  16. The sun Is always best, if you are not in a very great hurry.
  17. The above recipe is for plain icing.
  18. It may be varied according to taste by using pineapple, strawberry, or other flavoring.
  19. In using strawberry Icing, add a few drops of cochineal to color.
  20. For further particulars as to different Icings for cakes, see special section on "Icings and Frostlngs for Cakes."