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Sugar: a Great Source of Heat and Energy: Bonbons
COFFEE BONBONS Roll small pieces of fondant into balls. If the fondant is too soft to handle, add a little XXXX or confectioner's sugar. Let the balls stand until dry on the outside. Put a cup or more of the fondant in a double boiler over warm, but not boiling water, add a few drops of coffee extract and a tablespoonful or more of caramel syrup, also a little water (perhaps a teaspoonful) if needed and stir until melted; drop in a center, then with a dipping fork (made of wire) push it under the coating; when covered, lift out, draw the fork across the edge of the dish to remove superfluous coating, then turn the fork and drop the candy onto waxed paper or oil cloth. In lifting the fork from the bonbon a design may be made.
OTHER BONBONS Candied fruit, particularly cherries, cut in bits, nuts, broken in pieces or chopped, pieces of fig, dates or ginger may be mixed with fondant for centers. These centers may be dipped in plain white fondant, flavored to harmonize with the center, or, the fondant may be tinted green, pink, etc., with color paste, or brown with chocolate. Black coffee, much reduced by boiling, may be used instead of coffee extract.
PISTACHIO BONBONS Blanch a few pistachio nuts; split a few and leave these half meats to set on the top of the bonbons. Chop the rest of the nuts; mix with fondant and roll into oblong shapes. Coat these with fondant, tinted light green and flavored with almond and vanilla. If a teaspoonful of vanilla be used for flavoring, add only one-fourth a teaspoonful of almond. Set the half nut in place the instant the center is coated, as the coating stiffens very quickly. To make the coating a little heavier or hold its shape a little better, beat in a few drops of glycerine. Put the rounding side of the nut down. FONDANT WITH GLUCOSE 2 1/2 cups of sugar 1 cup of water 1/3 cup of glucose (any pure corn syrup) Put the sugar, glucose and water over the fire, and stir until boiling; wipe down the sides of the saucepan, over and cook as in the first recipe for fondant. Cook to 238 deg F. This fondant, on account of the glucose, is less liable to grain than the one previously given. Begin to cream before the syrup becomes cold. When the fondant begins to stiffen, scrape it into a bowl and cover with a damp cloth. Use at once or after a time. This fondant, on account of the glucose, as also fondant to which almond paste or chocolate is added, or fondant made with part maple sugar, will not "cream" as quickly as the ordinary fondant. It is "sticky" and can not be easily shaped by hand into centers. It is used almost exclusively for centers that are molded in starch. TO MOLD CENTERS IN STARCH Buy a cheap grade of cornstarch and keep it for this purpose. Sift the starch into a biscuit pan, filling it to the top. Smooth the starch with a flat stick long enough to rest on two sides of the pan. The impressions may be made, one at a time, with a thimble, a cork, glass stopper to a bottle or similar articles, but the easiest way is with small plaster moulds glued to a thin strip of wood. The stick should be of such length that the ends may rest on the sides of the pan. Lift up the molds and make a second row of impressions; also make other rows, if it can be done without injuring the shape of the impressions already made. Melt the fondant over hot water, stirring it meanwhile; tint with color paste, if desired (a little on the point of a wooden skewer will tint MAKING IMPRESSIONS IN STARCH TO MOLD FONDANT. - Page 242. a large quantity), and flavor according to the color. Use rose extract for pink candies and vanilla and almond for light green. Coffee extract will give both tint and flavor. Keep the fondant hot and thin and with a teaspoon drop it into the starch impressions, filling each level with the top of the starch. When cold pick out the candies and brush off the starch. They are now ready for coating with chocolate.
A chapter of dipped fondant candies that assumes you already have a batch of fondant creamed and resting. The whole exercise hinges on temperature control: fondant melted for coating must stay warm and fluid but never hot enough to cook further, or it sets grainy and dull.
- The coating temperatureMelt fondant over warm water, not boiling; the book gives no figure, but remelted fondant is generally worked somewhere in the region of 140-150F. Let it get much hotter and it loses gloss and sets dull rather than satiny.
- XXXX sugarXXXX is a grade of powdered sugar, the X's denoting fineness; the text treats it as interchangeable with confectioner's (icing) sugar. Use it sparingly, since too much stiffens the centre.
- Glucose"Glucose" here means confectioner's glucose syrup; the parenthetical "any pure corn syrup" is the author's own substitution and light corn syrup works exactly as intended. It is an interfering agent that blocks large crystals from forming, which is why this fondant stays soft and sticky.
- 238F is not optionalThat sits within the soft-ball range (roughly 234-240F), and a few degrees either way changes everything: under it the fondant never firms, over it turns short and crumbly. Use a calibrated digital thermometer and test it in boiling water first, adjusting for altitude (subtract about 1F per 500 feet).
- Caramel syrupNot caramel sauce in the modern ice-cream-topping sense. This is sugar cooked to a dark amber and let down with water — a colouring and flavouring syrup, unsweetened by comparison. Bottled gravy browning is the closest commercial analogue but adds salt.
- Coffee extractRarely stocked now. Instant espresso powder dissolved in the smallest possible amount of hot water gives both colour and flavour, and the recipe's own alternative — black coffee boiled down to a syrup — is closer to what the author expected.
- GlycerineFood-grade glycerine, sold in pharmacies and cake-decorating suppliers, is still used to keep fondant supple. A few drops is literally the dose; more makes the coating soft and slow to set.
- Starch mouldingThe cornstarch bed works, but the starch must be bone dry or the impressions collapse. Warm it gently and cool before use, keep the pan reserved for candy, and sieve out crumbs between batches. The recipe specifies a cheap grade and says to keep it for this purpose only.
- Humidity and yieldFondant work fails on damp days: the finished pieces weep. The recipe calls for a cup or more of fondant in the double boiler, and coating fondant left in the pan can be scraped out, covered with a damp cloth, and remelted.
Fondant dipping was a mainstay of the American candy trade around 1900, and the starch-mould method described here is a scaled-down version of what confectionery factories did on a much larger footing: trays of dry cornstarch stamped with plaster dies, filled from a hot kettle, then emptied and the starch sifted for reuse. That the technique appears in a book called Cooking for Two says something about the period's confidence that a home cook could and should reproduce shop work. The section heading "Sugar: a Great Source of Heat and Energy" is often read as an echo of the era's enthusiasm for the new science of calorimetry, in which sugar was cheerfully catalogued as efficient fuel rather than an indulgence. Pistachios, then imported and costly, and candied cherries and ginger mark these as party or gift candies; the coloured pastes and harmonised flavourings belong to the same decorative impulse that produced tinted icings and moulded ices on the same tables.