Sugar Glazings and Icings

Instructions

1. For the clear glaze which resembles barley sugar, and which requires to be as carefully guarded from damp: just dip the surface of the pastry into liquid caramel (see Chapter XXVII.).
2. Or sift sugar thickly over the pastry directly it is drawn from the oven, and melt it down with a salamander, or red-hot shovel held closely over it.
3. Or set it again into an oven sufficiently heated to dissolve the sugar; though this last method is not so well, as there is danger from it of the paste being scorched.
4. To make a fine white or coloured icing: whisk, as directed above, the whites of four fresh eggs to a perfectly solid froth.
5. Then, with a wooden spoon or spatula, mix gradually with them one pound of the best sugar, which has been dried and sifted through a fine sieve.
6. Work them together for a minute or two, and add less than a dessertspoonful of strained lemon-juice.
7. Spread it even over the cake or pastry, and dry it very gently indeed, either in a quite cool oven or in a meat screen placed before the fire.
8. From the difference in the size of eggs, a little more or less of sugar may be required. It may be coloured with a very few drops of prepared cochineal to give it a rose tint.
9. Proportions: whites of eggs beaten to snow, 4; sugar, 1 lb.; lemon-juice, small dessertspoonful.