For many, the german sweet „Amerikaner“ – a pastry with a sweet, whitish coating – is a childhood memory at the bakery. But there’s a lot of physics and chemistry in the frosting. A team led by Thomas Vilgis at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, together with colleagues from the Technical University of Berlin, has now taken on the sweet glaze and gained deeper insights into its formation process. The results could be used to optimize the industrial production process of fondant in the future.