For pistache icing. Color the water with green coloring paste, and flavor it with one teaspoonful of orange-flower water and one quarter teaspoonful of bitter-almond extract.
For pink icing. Use strawberry juice, or color water with a little cochineal.
For wine-cakes. Use sherry instead of water.
No. 2. Hard, white icing. Take the unbeaten white of an egg, dilute it with a very little water and flavor it. Stir in powdered sugar until it is of the consistency to spread.
This makes a hard, white icing.
No. 3. Boiled icing. Put a cupful of granulated sugar and a half cupful of hot water into a saucepan and stir until the sugar is dissolved, then let it boil without stirring until it threads or, if dropped into water, it can be taken up and rolled between the fingers into a soft ball. Remove it from the fire and stir until it slightly clouds, then immediately pour it over the cake.
This makes a clear icing, and is a good covering for cakes which are to be decorated, as it gives, with the decorating icing, two colors.
No. 4. Boiled icing, No. 2. Cook, without stirring, after the sugar is dissolved, one cupful of granulated sugar and one quarter cupful of hot water until it threads, then pour it slowly over the whipped white of one egg. Beat the mixture all the time, and until it is cool enough to spread.
No. 5. Maple icing. Boil to the thread or soft-ball stage a cupful of maple sugar with a quarter of a cupful of hot water to dissolve it, or use maple syrup. Pour it slowly over the whipped white of one egg as in No. 4.
No. 6. Caramel icing. Boil a cupful of granulated sugar, a half cupful of milk, and a teaspoonful of butter to the thread or soft-ball stage. Flavor with a few drops of vanilla and stir until it begins to grain.