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Chocolate Coated Almonds
Select nuts that are plump at the ends. Use them without blanching. Brush, to remove the dust. Melt "Dot" Chocolate and when cooled properly drop the nuts, one at a time, into the center of it; push the nuts under with the fork, then drop onto waxed paper or oil cloth. In removing the fork make a design on the top of each nut. These are easily prepared and are particularly good.
A dipping recipe rather than a cooking one: everything depends on the state of the chocolate when the nuts go in. The original assumes you know how to temper, because the pamphlet's readers were expected to have read the general dipping instructions elsewhere in the book.
- "Cooled properly" means tempered"Cooled properly" means bringing the melted chocolate down to working temperature -- essentially what we now call tempering. Melting to around 115F and then cooling it, with stirring, to roughly 88-90F for dark (a degree or two lower for milk) is the modern practice. Chocolate used too warm tends to set dull or streaked and stays soft.
- "Dot" ChocolateApparently one of Walter Baker & Co.'s chocolates, of a kind used for confectionery and dipping, long discontinued. Substitute a good couverture or any dark chocolate with cocoa butter as the only fat; avoid chips, which are formulated to hold their shape and do not flow well.
- Compound coating shortcutIf you would rather not temper, a confectioners' coating ("melting wafers," cocoa butter replaced with vegetable fat) sets hard at room temperature with no tempering. The flavour is flatter but the technique is exactly as written.
- Unblanched almondsThe recipe deliberately skips blanching, and the skins add a slight bitterness against the sweet coating. Brushing off dust matters more than it sounds: loose skin flakes and dust spoil the surface of the chocolate.
- Toast them firstThe recipe does not say to, but raw almonds are bland and slightly damp. Ten to twelve minutes at 350F, then cooled completely, gives far better results. The nuts must be fully cool or they will throw the chocolate out of temper.
- The forkA two- or three-tine dipping fork, or a regular table fork with the middle tines snipped, lets excess chocolate drain. The "design on the top" is the classic dipper's mark: lift, touch the nut down, then draw the fork off in a short curl or a series of ridges.
- Setting surfaceWaxed paper works; oil cloth was the period equivalent of a silicone mat. Parchment or a silicone mat is better still. Let them set at cool room temperature, around 65F, not in the refrigerator, which causes condensation and dull spots.
- Yield and keepingKeeping -- Stored airtight, away from light and strong smells, they keep several weeks; they do not want refrigeration.
Walter Baker & Co. of Dorchester, Massachusetts, traced its origins to a chocolate mill established on the Neponset River in 1765, and by the turn of the twentieth century it was the best-known chocolate name in the United States. The company's Choice Recipes booklets were straightforward advertising: collections gathered from cooking-school teachers and domestic writers, given away or sold for a few cents, with the recipes generally pointing back to a Baker product. "Dot" was one of the firm's coating chocolates, sold specifically for the home candy-dipping that is often said to have been a genuine craze in American households around the turn of the century. Chocolate-covered almonds themselves are far older than the pamphlet ack to medieval European confectionery, and chocolate simply replaced the sugar shell once cheap coating chocolate made it practical. The line "these are easily prepared" is doing the real work here: it is an assurance to a reader who suspected, correctly, that most candy-making is harder than it looks.