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Cream Fondant
To two tablespoonfuls of thick cream and a teaspoonful of corn syrup, add gradually a cup of sifted confectioners' sugar. Work with a wooden spoon until smooth. If not stiff enough add a little more sugar to make a stiff paste. Flavor as preferred. Used for stuffing dates and prunes, between nut meats, etc.
An uncooked fondant, mixed cold and stiffened by sheer sugar content rather than by boiling to a temperature. It takes about five minutes and needs no thermometer.
- The hinge: add sugar in stagesFondant made this way is a ratio problem, not a technique problem. Add the sifted sugar a couple of tablespoons at a time and stop when the mass holds a shape without sticking to your fingers; the exact amount varies with the fat content of the cream and the humidity of the room.
- Thick creamIn period usage this most likely means heavy cream rather than a whipped or cultured cream; modern heavy or double cream works directly. Half-and-half or single cream will need noticeably more sugar and gives a softer, stickier paste.
- Corn syrupLight corn syrup is what the recipe assumes. In an uncooked fondant it mainly binds the sugar and helps keep the paste soft rather than dry and crumbly; in cooked fondant the same syrup also inhibits crystal growth. Golden syrup or glucose syrup does the same job; honey works but will dominate the flavour.
- Sift the sugarConfectioners' sugar compacts in the box, and with so little liquid and no heat in the mixture, lumps are unlikely to break down. Sift it even if the bag claims to be lump-free.
- FlavouringA quarter teaspoon of vanilla, almond or peppermint extract per cup of sugar is a reasonable starting point. Add liquid flavourings before the last of the sugar so you can compensate for the extra moisture.
- YieldOne cup of sugar with the cream and syrup makes roughly 5 to 6 ounces of fondant, enough to stuff about 20 to 24 dates or prune halves, or to fill a couple of dozen walnut sandwiches.
- KeepingBecause it is never cooked, the cream in it is perishable. Refrigerate the finished sweets in a closed container and eat them within three or four days; wrap well, as fondant readily picks up refrigerator odours.
Fondant proper is a cooked syrup, boiled to the soft-ball stage and then agitated as it cools so that it sets into microscopically fine crystals. What this recipe offers is the shortcut version, sometimes called uncooked or cream fondant, in which powdered sugar supplies the fine crystals ready-made and cream and syrup simply bind them. Recipes of this kind spread widely in American household and school cookery once cheap, finely milled confectioners' sugar and commercial corn syrup were both available on the grocery shelf in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; they made candy-making possible without a thermometer, a marble slab, or the risk of a scorched pan. The suggested uses here — stuffed dates and prunes, fondant pressed between two walnut halves — are the standard repertoire of the period's home-made confections, the sort of thing turned out for church sales, holiday boxes and afternoon calls rather than sold in a shop.