Fluffy White Frosting - Mom

Two posts in one day! 
 
This is birthday cake fluffy white frosting so sweet that it makes your teeth ache.  Actually, it's Italian meringue but we didn't know that growing up, even Mom didn't know that it was called Italian meringue until I told her about a year ago.    

Apparently, Italian meringue is a recipe only the most intrepid baker would challenge herself with making and Mom just churned it out like it was no big deal.  Even the first few times I made it I had no idea it was such a big deal and I went looking for a similar recipe on the internet because I agreed to make a cake for someone who was lactose intolerant, I couldn't do buttercream but needed to do frosting and remembered this one, really you'd think I would have found something that would have warned me off but no, I didn't and it wasn't hard at all.  So in our opinion it's not a big deal, it's easy.
 
Fluffy White Frosting
 
I'm going to list all the ingredients at once here because there's a lot of text in the instructions and you are dealing with boiling sugar, so I don't want you to miss anything, you need to have everything ready on the counter waiting to be used.
  
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
a dash of salt
1/3 cup water
2 egg whites - yolks discarded
1 tsp vanilla extract
  
It's not hard, you just need to move fast at the finish and you don't have time to go searching through your cupboards.
 
  
Here we go:
In a small saucepan (if you have one with a pouring spout now is the time to use it) combine
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
a dash of salt
1/3 cup water
  
Give it a stir then run your finger round the inside of the saucepan and make sure you push all those little grains of sugar down into the water.
  
Turn the heat on low, because a little bit of warm will help the sugar to dissolve at this point you can give it a little bit of a stir to help it a long, be sure to check again with your finger for any grains of sugar that may have crept up out of the water and push them back down.  If the pan is too hot to check with your finger it was too hot for you to be stirring, tip the lot out and start again.
  
Once the sugar has started dissolving, Do Not Stir It Again - this is a rule with sugar, once you start to cook it you don't stir it.  You won't get a syrup, you'll get a grainy mass, I don't know why, sugar's just cruel that way.
  
Now, turn the heat right up high and bring the sugar to a furious boil, and leave boiling for about three to five minutes.  Don't let it start to caramelise but make sure it's angry.
  
Into the bowl of your mixer put
2 egg whites
start mixing slowly until you get a few bubbles forming in the egg whites, then turn it off and wait for the sugar syrup.
 
Turn the mixer on your highest speed and slowly from high above the mixer pour a very thin stream of the sugar syrup into the egg whites as they beat.

 
The boiling will cook the egg whites but the mixing will keep them soft and fluffy as it does.
 
Immediately, once the sugar is fully mixed in, quickly add in
1 tsp vanilla
mix again to distribute the vanilla through
 
Scoop the frosting out onto the cake and start spreading it around, if you're icing a cake from a tube pan, make sure you push some icing down into the hole.  Work quickly, the frosting develops a skin really fast.  We used to decorate by slapping the surface of the frosting with the spatula and pulling out peaks and swirls like a spiky cloud.

 
If you're super fast you could use a piping bag but I haven't the talent, I'm more a spiky cloud type person.  Also spiky cloud helps to camouflage the toothpick where my pound coin is hiding.  heh-heh-heh.