Rock Sugar
Ingredients
Directions
Make the mixture
Boil the sugar to a caramel without adding lemon juice.
Remove the pan from heat and quickly stir in the Royal Icing with a wooden spoon.
Continue stirring as the mixture rises, then pour it into a square case made of strong cartridge paper.
Hold the hot pan over the case as the mixture rises.
Set and finish
Make the cases 4 to 5 inches high.
For pink rock sugar, color the icing with cochineal.
After cooling, remove the paper and cut the blocks into square lengths with a saw.
Dish the pieces in alternating pink and white.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Sugar
- Melts and cooks to a caramel, then sets into a hard, brittle, sweet block.
- Royal icing
- Its egg whites trap air in the hot sugar, making the mixture rise and turn light and opaque.
The step that matters
Stir in the icing quickly after removing the pan from heat. Sugar keeps cooking in the residual heat and can darken or turn grainy if left over heat. The icing must be fully mixed in before the mixture sets, so the air is evenly trapped and the texture stays uniform.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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