Seven Minute Frosting II

With a yellow cake, the taste and texture are very nice. The icing has a mildly crispy meringue shell and adds moisture to the cake especially if kept unrefrigerated. The seven minutes the title purports is totally inaccurate. It took at LEAST 20 minutes with my hand mixer before the meringue got to the soft peak stage. As for the act of frosting, that can be a bit challenging. This icing is a bit thin for my liking. I ended up with icing all over my counter. This frosting is just not very effective for layered cakes, as it just oozes out from between the layers. This may have been avoided if allowed to completely dry before adding another layer. Try fresh berries instead. It takes quite a few (four or more) hours to completely set. I would have been building this cake for a few days had I gone by that method. The drying time (for lack of a better term) also prohibits stencils from being used effectively. To the credit of this icing, it DOES taste GREAT and contains much less fat and calories than a butter-cream type of frosting. Making this recipe is a challenging, but rewarding experience. Seven minute frosting complimented the yellow cake from King Arthur Four's Baker's Companion very nicely indeed.

Nice flavor, especially with my favorite Mexican vanilla, but I thought it was still rather grainy, and also found it much too sweet (hard thing to accomplish considering my killer sweet tooth). Might try again with a reduced amount of powdered sugar for a silkier texture, but I wasn't teriibly impressed with this recipe.

YUM! So much better than canned! The texture is all marshmallowy and gooey while you spread it on the cake and then turns into a light regular frosting as it dries. I had to make sure I didn't eat too much while it was in the gooey stage. Yummy yum!