Home › Candies › Maplenut Creams
Maplenut Creams
Add to a cup of sifted confectioners' sugar four tablespoonfuls of maple syrup; if not stiff enough to knead, add more sugar. Knead until smooth.
Powder your hands with cornstarch to prevent the candy sticking to them when kneading. Form into small balls and roll in chopped browned almonds or pecans.
An uncooked fondant that depends entirely on the ratio of sugar to syrup, so weigh or at least sift carefully and add the last sugar in small increments.
- Confectioners' sugarA cup of sifted confectioners' sugar is roughly 3.5-4 oz / 100-115 g, depending on how lightly it is spooned in. Modern boxed sugar contains cornstarch as an anti-caking agent, which helps here; sift it anyway, since lumps will not knead out.
- Maple syrupFour tablespoons is 60 ml. Use real maple syrup, not pancake syrup, which is corn syrup with flavouring and will make a slack, cloyingly sweet paste. A darker grade (formerly Grade B, now Grade A Dark or Very Dark) gives noticeably more maple flavour.
- The hingeAdd syrup to sugar, not the reverse, and stop short of what looks wet. The mixture firms as it is kneaded and as the sugar hydrates, so a paste that seems barely too dry after a minute of working is usually right.
- Cornstarch on the handsA light dusting only. Too much and the surface goes chalky and refuses to take the nuts. Rolling the balls between cool, dry palms works better than a heavy coating.
- Browning the nutsToast almonds or pecans in a moderate oven (around 350F) until fragrant, checking from about 7 minutes on, cool them completely, then chop. Warm nuts will soften the fondant and the oil will bleed into it.
- Yield and keepingTwo dozen or more small balls, depending on the size you roll them. Store in a single layer in a tin between sheets of waxed paper; they keep for a week or two at room temperature and are better out of the refrigerator, which dries them.
Uncooked fondants of this kind spread through American home cookery in the late nineteenth century, once cheap, finely milled confectioners' sugar made it possible to produce a smooth candy without a sugar thermometer or a marble slab. They appear constantly in community cookbooks and in books aimed at young cooks, because the technique is simply kneading. The maple version is usually associated with the northeastern sugar states, where syrup is often said to have been more readily at hand than elsewhere, and pairing it with pecans or almonds gave a homemade sweet that may well have been meant to recall the nut creams sold in confectioners' shops. Books of this era carried brisk chapters on candies, offering recipes for something a household could turn out in an afternoon without lighting the range.