I’ve been very lucky that several readers have sent me emails offering both suggestions and support for making my son a natural and wholesome cake for his first birthday. One especially generous reader even took the time to scan and share some recipes from her grandmother’s 1940s cookbook! I tried out the recipe for a boiled icing, similar process to an Italian butter-cream, but without any butter. The icing came out lightly sweet and according to my husband a bit marshmallow like in texture. Nevertheless, I like the sheen and it shows promise to be used for decorating. For the cake I used a classic (absolutely delicious and moist) chocolate cake recipe that a friend came across in Cooks Illustrated. The cake calls for a chocolate frosting, but I obviously deviated from the instructions. And, although the boiled icing has a different taste and texture than we are used to for cakes, I believe that the light flavor and mild sweetness of the icing complimented the richness of the chocolate cake nicely.

The boiled icing recipe looked simple: sugar, water, egg whites and flavoring, but it was far from simple to make. I had never before (successfully) brought sugar to a soft ball stage and I was surprised that it took nearly 30 minutes. Between cooking the sugar and adjusting the egg whites and preparing the over all mixture it took me over an hour to make this icing!

For this experiment I used the boiled icing to cover the sheet cake and also to try a few decorations. Since I am making a plane I thought it would be fun to give the allusion of the plane flying in the sky, so I made some sort of Zen-like clouds.

As you can see from the picture of the clouds, the boiled icing melted together a bit and then hardened with a bit of a shine. Ultimately, I think that the consistency of the boiled icing may lend itself to covering an airplane, but in a slightly different way than in the photo below. I think that I will use the same decorating tip, but with the intention of the icing sort of melding together and making the plane look almost as if it is made out of fiber glass.  If I succeed I’ll be sure to share more pictures.

In the photo above, I used a Wilton decorating recipe for the airplane icing. I think that the plane turned out looking very cute, but as I mentioned above, for the big day I envision a slightly more realistic and sleek looking plane!