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Fondant, for Masking Cakes, Etc
This is simply made with two pounds of sugar, half a cupful of water, and a quarter of a tea-spoonful of cream of tartar, but great care and attention to detail are necessary. Put the sugar and water into a good-sized saucepan; when melted mix the cream of tartar with a little water and stir in. Try the heat with a kitchen thermometer, and when it reaches 230 degrees take the pan off the fire, and turn the contents out at once into a basin which has been rinsed out with cold water. Place the basin in another containing cold water, and renew the water as it gets warm. Sprinkle the top of the syrup with cold water to prevent it caking, and allow it to stand until blood-warm. Then beat it with a wooden spoon till it becomes stiff and white; turn it on to a baking-board and knead it like dough, using icing sugar instead of flour. When it becomes smooth and elastic it is ready to use, or to put away in a basin covered over with a thick damp cloth. (See also FROST, OR ICING, FOR CAKES.)
A straightforward poured fondant, and the method is essentially the one still used. The details that matter are temperature and patience.
- The hinge: cool before beatingFondant is sugar crystallised on purpose, and the size of the crystals decides whether it is silky or gritty. Agitating hot syrup gives coarse crystals; letting it fall to blood-warm (about 100F) before beating gives the fine ones. Do not stir or disturb the syrup in the basin while it cools.
- That 230 degreesThe book means Fahrenheit, read on the 'kitchen thermometer' it calls for. Modern fondant is usually taken to 238-240F (soft-ball); 230F is likely to leave a slacker paste that may never firm properly. If your first batch stays sticky after kneading, push the next one a few degrees higher.
- Water quantityHalf a cup of water to two pounds of sugar is very lean and the sugar can scorch before it dissolves. A full cup is safer; the excess simply boils off before you reach temperature. Dissolve completely over gentle heat before letting it come to the boil.
- Keep the sides cleanA single stray crystal on the pan wall will seed the whole batch. Wash the sides down with a wet pastry brush during the early boil, or cover the pan for the first minute or two so the steam does it for you.
- Cream of tartarIt inverts a little of the sucrose into glucose and fructose, which interferes with crystal growth and keeps the finished fondant soft. A quarter teaspoon for two pounds is correct; more will make a fondant that refuses to set.
- ,Wrapped airtight or under a damp cloth as directed, fondant keeps for weeks at cool room temperature; it is often said to improve after a day's rest, when the paste has relaxed and reworks more smoothly. To use it for masking, warm it gently over hot water with a spoonful of syrup or water until it pours in a ribbon, and do not let it get hot or it will lose its gloss.
Fondant, from the French fondre, to melt, is the confectioner's basic sugar paste, and its rise in domestic cookery books tracks the falling price of refined sugar through the nineteenth century, along with the spread of the sugar thermometer from the professional confectionery trade into ordinary kitchens. It is a foundation preparation: once made, the same paste masks a cake, forms the centre of a chocolate, or is coloured and flavoured for petits fours. The insistence on a thermometer is itself a marker of date; earlier books relied largely on the older finger-and-cold-water tests for thread, soft ball and crack.