The old way of making frosting was a half-day’s work. I now laugh at the
extra exertion once made to be sure that the eggs were sufficiently and
properly beaten. The following is the true way to make frosting, which
is done and dried on the cake in ten minutes, allowing three minutes for
the making:
Use a heaping tea-cupful of fine pulverized sugar to the white of each
egg, or, say, a pound of sugar to the whites of three eggs. Beat the
whites until they are slightly _foaming_ only; do not beat them to a
froth. The sugar may all be poured on the egg at once, or, if considered
easier to mix, it may be gradually added. Either way, as soon as the
sugar and eggs are thoroughly stirred together, and flavored with a
little lemon or vanilla, the icing is ready to spread over the cake. It
would be advisable to ice the cakes as soon as they are taken from the
oven. The icing made with the white of one egg is quite sufficient to
frost an ordinary-sized cake.
It is very little extra trouble to decorate a frosted cake. One can
purchase funnels for the purpose with different shaped ends. In place of
no better funnel, make a cornucopia of stiff writing-paper; fill it with
the frosting, and press it out at the small end, forming different
shapes, according to taste, over the cake. Little centre-pieces or
leaves can always be purchased at the confectioner’s to aid in the
decoration.
For a cocoa-nut-cake, mix plenty of the grated cocoa-nut into the
frosting, which spread over the cake; decorate it then with plain
frosting.
For a chocolate-cake, after spreading over the chocolate frosting
mentioned in the receipt for chocolate-cake, decorate it with delicate
lines of the white frosting.
The appearance of boiled icing (which is generally flavored with lemon)
is much improved also by a decoration with the plain white frosting.