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Ribbon Caramels
CHOCOLATE LAYERS 1 1/4 cups of granulated sugar, 1/2 a cup of pure corn syrup, scant measure, 1/4 a cup of butter, 1-16 a teaspoonful of cream of tartar, 1 1/4 cups of rich milk, 1 1/4 squares of Baker's Premium No. 1 Chocolate, 1 teaspoonful of vanilla extract.
WHITE LAYER 2/3 a cup of granulated sugar, 1/4 (scant) a cup of water, 1 cup, less one tablespoonful, of pure corn syrup, 1/2 a pound of dessicated cocoanut.
Put the sugar, pure corn syrup, butter, cream of tartar and the fourth a cup of milk over the fire, stir until the mixture boils, then very gradually stir in the rest of the milk. Let cook, stirring occasionally, to 248 degree F., or until, when tested in water or on a cold marble, a pretty firm ball may be formed. Add the chocolate and vanilla, mix thoroughly, and turn into two well-buttered shallow pans. For the white layer, put the sugar, water and pure corn syrup over the fire, stir until boiling, then add the cocoanut and stir occasionally until a soft ball may be formed when a little of the mixture is dropped upon a cold marble. Put this mixture over the fire, to dissolve the sugar, but do not let it begin to boil until the chocolate layers are turned into the pans. When the white mixture is ready, turn enough of it onto one of the chocolate layers to make a layer about one-third an inch thick. Have the other chocolate layer cooled, by standing in cold water; remove it from the pan and dispose above the cocoanut layer. Let stand until cold and firm, then cut in cubes; wrap each cube in waxed paper.
A two-part boiled candy: two firm-ball chocolate caramel layers sandwiching a coconut layer cooked to soft ball. The whole thing lives or dies on timing the two pans so both are still workable when they meet.
- The hinge: cook both batches on overlapping clocksThe white mixture must be dissolved but not yet boiling when the chocolate layers go into their pans, then brought quickly to soft ball. If the coconut layer sets before it is spread, or the chocolate layers cool past the point of bonding, the finished slab will split along the seams when cut.
- Baker's Premium No. 1This is unsweetened baking chocolate, sold in 1 oz squares. Use 1 1/4 oz of any unsweetened chocolate; the sugar and corn syrup here are calculated for it, so semisweet will throw the candy out of balance.
- 1-16 a teaspoonfulThat is one-sixteenth of a teaspoon of cream of tartar — a bare pinch. Its job is to invert a little of the sugar so the caramels stay chewy rather than turning grainy, and more is not better.
- Use a thermometer for both layers248°F is firm ball for the chocolate. The coconut layer's "soft ball" is 235–240°F. The cold-water and cold-marble tests in the original work, but a candy thermometer removes the guesswork on a batch that cannot be re-cooked.
- Rich milkWhole milk is the modern equivalent; period "rich milk" was often whole milk with a little cream stirred in. Half-and-half in place of part of it gives a softer, more tender caramel.
- Adding the milk graduallyOnly a quarter cup goes in at the start, with the rest stirred in slowly as the syrup cooks, so a flood of cold milk does not knock the pan off the boil.
- Desiccated cocoanutUnsweetened desiccated (fine, dried) coconut, not the sweetened flaked coconut sold for cakes. Sweetened flake carries its own syrup and moisture and will make the white layer sticky and over-sweet.
- Pans and yieldTwo shallow pans of the same size, so the layers stack cleanly; the recipe gives no dimensions and no yield. Wrap the cubes in waxed paper as directed, or they will stick to one another.
- CuttingCut when fully cold and firm, with a long oiled blade pressed straight down rather than drawn. Sawing tears the coconut layer away from the chocolate.
Choice Recipes was one of a long series of small booklets issued by the Walter Baker & Co. chocolate works at Dorchester, Massachusetts, a firm trading since the eighteenth century and by 1900 the best-known chocolate name in the United States. The recipes were compiled by well-regarded cooking-school writers — Maria Parloa among them — and chocolate quantities are often specified in Baker's own numbered squares, alongside calls for the firm's cocoa and for plain weights, which is advertising as much as instruction. Ribbon caramels belong to the wave of home candy-making that followed the spread of the household thermometer and cheap corn syrup: glucose syrup resists crystallisation, so a cook without professional training could reliably produce a smooth chewy caramel rather than a grainy one. The layered, wrapped cube imitates the boxed confectioner's goods then sold by weight in city shops, and the waxed-paper wrapper — the same one still used on commercial caramels — was the period's answer to keeping a hygroscopic sweet from fusing into a single mass.