Sugar Frosted Berries

On Thursday, I had the evening off from work, so I spent the day part of it making what I consider my most ambitious baking project thus far. My reading group was meeting that evening to discuss Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem, and as is quickly becoming tradition, I baked a little something for the gathering. I wanted it to be extra special because one of the group members was celebrating his birthday. The cake itself, which I will write about in the next day or so, was a little more involved than I had expected, and then to make things more complicated, I decided, on a whim, to try sugar frosting berries for the first time. The plan was, if they turned out well, to use them as decoration on the cake.

I shouldn't mislead anyone here, sugar frosting fruit and or flowers is not really hard at all. It's just that with all the steps that the cake required, I surprised myself by taking that on too. It was actually kind of fun and sort of soothing, a good activity to do to help calm me down since I was getting stressed, the cake had a gajillion pre-requirements that needed to be done BEFORE I could assemble it, and I was running out of time.

I think sugar frosted fruit looks very pretty on cakes, and the flowers look even prettier. Since I didn't have access to any organic edible flowers I opted for raspberries and blackberries. Considering it was my first time, I didn't think the fruit came out that bad looking. It was a little awkward handling the fruit at first, since none of the berries had stems, but once I got a groove going, things went quickly. I know its sort of hard to tell from the above picture how pretty it looked, but trust me, when I write about and post the cake entry you'll get to see how nice it actually was.

To frost the fruit* you will need, the fruit of your choice, an egg white, a small clean paintbrush that has never been used for anything but cooking, some superfine sugar and paper towels. Wash the fruit and then gently dry them with paper towels. Beat the egg white and set aside. Pour some superfine sugar into a dish and then set another dish aside with dry paper towels to hold the finished fruit. Using the paintbrush, coat the surface of the fruit with some egg white and then, either dip the fruit in the superfine sugar OR use a spoon to sprinkle it over the fruit. Set the fruit on the clean paper towels and let air dry. I didn't time how long it took to dry the fruit, I kind of sensed it was ready when the fruit started to look "frosted". Use as garnish for cakes and pastries.

*source: Best-Ever Cake Decorating by Angela Nilsen and Sarah Maxwell

Written by Deb on November 7, 2003 12:27 AM