Plain Water Icing
Ingredients
Directions
Make the icing
Mix the icing sugar and boiling water until you achieve a consistency similar to good cream.
Ice the cake
Use the icing while it is warm.
To prevent the icing from cooling, place the bowl with the icing in another bowl of hot water while icing.
Smooth the icing on a large cake using a knife dipped in hot water.
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
- Icing sugar
- Provides sweetness and body, and sets to a smooth, firm finish as it dries.
- Boiling water
- Dissolves the sugar and loosens it to a creamy, spreadable consistency.
The step that matters
Keeping the icing warm. Icing thickens as it cools, so keeping the bowl in hot water keeps it smooth and spreadable while you work. If it stiffens, it becomes hard to spread evenly over the cake.
“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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