Home › Recipes › Almond Fondant Sticks
Almond Fondant Sticks
2 1/2 cups of coffee A or granulated sugar, 1/4 a cup of pure corn syrup, 1/2 a cup of water, 1/4 a pound of almond paste, 1/4 a pound of Baker's Premium No. 1 Chocolate, 1 teaspoonful vanilla extract, 1/2 a pound of Baker's "Dot" Chocolate.
Put the sugar, pure corn syrup and water over the fire. Stir until the sugar is dissolved. Wash down the sides of the kettle as in making fondant. Let boil to the soft ball degree, or to 238 degree F. Add the almond paste, cut into small, thin pieces, let boil up vigorously, then turn onto a damp marble. When nearly cold turn to a cream with wooden spatula. It will take considerable time to turn this mixture to fondant. Cover and let stand half an hour. Add the Baker's Premium No. 1 Chocolate, melted over hot water, and knead it in thoroughly. Add at the same time the vanilla. The chocolate must be added warm. At once cut off a portion of the fondant and knead it into a round ball; then roll it lightly under the fingers into a long strip the shape and size of a lead pencil; form as many of these strips as desired; cut the strips into two-inch lengths and let stand to become firm. Have ready the "Dot" Chocolate melted over hot water and in this coat the prepared sticks, leaving the surface a little rough.
A classic confectioner's fondant, flavoured with almond paste and unsweetened chocolate, then hand-dipped. The work is straightforward but the temperatures and the resting are not negotiable.
- The hinge: let the fondant restAfter the mass is creamed it must sit covered for at least half an hour before the chocolate goes in. Fondant that has just turned is grainy and stiff; the rest lets the sugar crystals equalise and the paste become smooth and pliable.
- Coffee A sugarA nineteenth-century trade grade of white granulated sugar, slightly coarser than today's standard. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct substitute; the recipe already offers it as the alternative.
- Baker's Premium No. 1Baker's unsweetened chocolate, essentially pure chocolate liquor. The company's unsweetened baking bar is still sold, though no longer under the "Premium No. 1" name. Four ounces is the quarter pound called for here. Do not substitute semisweet, which will throw the sugar balance off entirely.
- Baker's "Dot" ChocolateA discontinued Baker's chocolate sold in small dots for coating. Use 8 oz of a good couverture or dipping chocolate. The original simply melts it over hot water with no tempering step; temper it if you want gloss and snap. Note that the recipe deliberately asks for the coated surface to be left "a little rough."
- Pure corn syrupLight corn syrup, used here as an interfering agent to keep the sugar from crystallising coarsely. Glucose syrup works identically. It is not a sweetener choice and should not be omitted.
- 238 FUse a digital thermometer and calibrate it in boiling water first; a few degrees over and the fondant will be hard and short, a few under and the sticks may not hold a pencil shape. Boil the almond paste in briefly and vigorously, as directed.
- The damp marbleA marble or granite slab, sprinkled with water, is still the best surface: it pulls heat out fast and evenly. A chilled sheet pan will do. The recipe directs you to cream the mass with a wooden spatula when it is "nearly cold."
- Chocolate added warmThe recipe insists the melted unsweetened chocolate be warm when it is kneaded in; chocolate added cold will set into flecks that are difficult to work out.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; it depends entirely on how thinly you roll the ropes. Store airtight in a cool room, not the refrigerator, where condensation will bloom the coating.
This comes from one of the promotional cookbooks issued by the Walter Baker company of Dorchester, Massachusetts, a chocolate firm that traced itself to a mill established on the Neponset River in 1765 and that spent the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries publishing recipe pamphlets naming its own products in every ingredient list. The recipes were largely written by professional cooking-school teachers of the period, which shows here in the confectioner's discipline: a stated boiling temperature, washing down the pan sides, the mandatory rest. Fondant sticks of this kind belonged to a style borrowed from French confiserie, workable by 1900 with almond paste and dipping chocolate bought ready-made. "Dot" chocolate was sold as small drops for melting and coating; it has long since vanished from the catalogue.