Tip to people having problems with sugar crystals or getting it to beat up stiff enough: add 1/4 tsp of cream of tartar. It will prevent sugar crystals and makes egg whites beat up lighter. This is the stuff childhood memories are made of.

My mom makes this recipe (from Better Homes and Gardens), and substitutes maraschino cherry juice for the water, drains and dices the maraschino cherries and adds them in at the very end (they have to be dry!), and uses it to ice an angel food cake. It is delicious! Sometimes she does a two layer angel food cake and mixes cream cheese with strawberry jam to put between the two layers, which goes really well with the cherry frosting. It is one of my favorite cakes, light and delicious.

I remeber my mom making this when I was a kid, and it brought back fond memories. This is a great easy to make frosting for when you want something a bit different from buttercream frosting.

My husband insists on this frosting each year for his b-day. I panic and end up making it, but it DOES get/stay grainy, not to mention (we live in Arizona) I end up beating it over the heat for at LEAST 15 minutes. However, it reminds him of his Grandmother, so who am I to complain?

I was optimistic about making this, but mine turned out terribly. The frosting looked beautiful, but when eaten, it was terribly grainy. It tasted like the sugar did not dissolve completely somehow. I will keep looking for a seven minute frosting recipe.

The first time my grandmother and I made this recipe we made 5 coconut cakes. We broke the cocunuts with hammers and hand grated the meat. I will never forget it. This frosting is so easy to make and tastes great with fresh coconut.

This is too sweet. My mothers was not as sugary and had a sheen to it.

This is an okay frosting but you will want to eat your cake that day because left overs for this frosting are not good. This is easy to spread and has a nice, light, fluffy texture. It almost tastes like marshmellow jet puff to me. This frosting does not keep well in the freezer and does not keep well if left on a cake for more than a day. It gets very crumbly and hard.

This recipe worked out perfectly. I did use Baker's Sugar, which is ultrafine and keeps the frosting from being grainy. As others have said, you do have to frost the cake immediately before the wonderful "crust" forms on the icing. Dinner guests raved about this frosting, bringing back memories of their Moms making this years ago!

I've been making this for years. The key is to make sure the sugar is dissolved. That time over the double boiler is crucial. Also, don't make it on a humid day. It makes it mucky.

I've made this recipe several times, each with great success. The first time I made this I was a little afraid of it as I'd heard from others how difficult it was, but I've never had a problem. Fluffy white clouds of marshmallow like frosting, cannot be used in a decorator's tube, but can slathered on with a spatula. Once it's on, I take the side of my spatula and "pick" the frosting all around, making tiny peaks. This makes one of the prettiest cakes ever. I think the frosting is best eaten the day it is served as it can get kind of grainy and start to droop.

Took longer than seven minutes, but I'll take the blame for that one.

This is the same recipe as the one in Better Homes and Gardens. It's wonderful. I don't have a double boiler so I put a glass bowl over a pot of simmering water and it worked fine. I tinted this green and spread it on a red velvet cake for Xmas. Wonderful. Does not travel well though because it is very sticky.

Love it...Put it on a chocolate layer cake and it tasted like childhood!!!

It took alot longer than 7 minutes and it never did get to the right thickness. I didn't think it was sweet enough either. I won't be making this one again=(

This icing was really good but I do have one that is a little easier and it doesn't break down like this one seemed to.