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Pistachio Chocolate Creams
Fondant, Green color-paste, 1 teaspoonful of vanilla extract, 1/3 a teaspoonful of almond extract, Pistachio nuts in slices and halves, 1/2 a pound of Baker's "Dot" Chocolate.
Using green color-paste, vanilla and almond extract, mould the fondant in long shapes. Put a bit of nut in each impression, before filling it with fondant. When firm coat with "Dot" Chocolate and set half a pistachio nut on top.
A confectioner's recipe from a chocolate company's promotional booklet, written for someone who already keeps fondant and a starch tray on hand. The hinge is temperature: fondant that is warmed past about 150F loses its fine crystal structure and dries grainy, and coating chocolate that is not tempered will bloom grey within a day.
- FondantNo quantity is given; a pound of fondant will make roughly 40 small centres. Melt it gently over hot water only until it flows, never over direct heat, and never above about 150F. Commercial rolled fondant sold for cake covering is a different product and will not set with the same short, crystalline bite.
- "Mould in long shapes"This means casting in a starch tray: a shallow box of dried cornstarch into which impressions are pressed with a plaster or wooden model, here an elongated one. The centres are poured in, left overnight to firm and crust, then lifted out and brushed clean. A silicone candy mould is the practical substitute, though the surface will be glossier and the crust thinner.
- Baker's "Dot" ChocolateA sweetened coating or dipping chocolate sold by Walter Baker, made to set hard and shiny. A good dark couverture stands in, though it will be less sweet than the original. The recipe's half pound is meant to coat the whole batch.
- TemperingThe original assumes it without saying so. Dark couverture is brought to about 115F, cooled to 82F, and reworked to 88-90F for dipping; hold it there while you work or the finished creams will streak and refuse to snap.
- Green color-pastePeriod colour pastes were highly concentrated and generally glycerine-based. Modern gel colours behave much the same way: add on a toothpick, a trace at a time. Pistachio centres of this era appear to have been tinted well past what the nut itself contributes.
- Almond extractA third of a teaspoon against a full teaspoon of vanilla is deliberate and should not be rounded up. Almond extract carries hard through fondant and quickly reads as marzipan rather than pistachio.
- The nutsBlanch shelled pistachios for a minute in boiling water and rub off the skins to get the bright green the recipe wants; unblanched nuts look brown against the fondant. Set the half nut on top while the chocolate is still wet so it anchors.
- Yield and keepingRoughly 40 pieces from a pound of fondant. Store in a single layer at cool room temperature, not the refrigerator, where condensation will dull the coating and dissolve sugar at the surface.
Choice Recipes was one of a long line of booklets issued by the Walter Baker company of Dorchester, Massachusetts, a chocolate maker whose business dated to the eighteenth century and whose La Belle Chocolatiere trademark was among the most recognised in American grocery. The booklets were advertising in the guise of instruction, which is why the chocolate here is named by brand and grade while the fondant is left unmeasured: readers were expected to know fondant work and to buy the coating. Pistachio creams belong to the French-derived confectionery that American candy shops sold by the pound around the turn of the twentieth century, when starch-moulded fondant centres were the backbone of the trade and the pistachio was an expensive, faintly exotic import that justified its own tinted, almond-scented imitation of itself.