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Cocoanut and Chocolate Layer Candy
Part One 1 tablespoon butter 1/2 cup milk 1½ cups sugar 2½ squares unsweetened chocolate 1 pinch cream of tartar 1 teaspoon vanilla extract Part Two 2 teaspoons butter 1/2 cup milk 1/2 cup Dromedary Cocoanut 1 teaspoon lemon extract 1½ cups sugar 1 teaspoon lemon extract Melt butter, add milk, sugar ar and chocolate; when dissolved add cream of tartar and boil 12 minutes, stirring constantly. Add vanilla and beat until creamy. Pour quickly into buttered tin. Melt butter, add milk and sugar and boil for 12 minutes, stirring all the time, add cocoanut and lemon. Beat until creamy and pour on top of the hardened chocolate candy. Sprinkle with Dromedary Cocoanut and when cool cut into bars.
Two quick fudges poured one atop the other: a chocolate base and a coconut-lemon top. The whole thing turns on timing, since the second batch has to go down while the first is firm but still warm enough to bond.
- The hinge: pour the top layer at the right momentThe recipe says only to pour onto the hardened chocolate base. Layers poured onto a stone-cold base are more likely to separate when cut, so pour while the base is set but still faintly warm.
- Read the quantities with careEach part calls for about 1½ cups sugar, ½ cup milk and the stated butter; the chocolate figure is garbled in the original and is either 2 or 2½ squares of unsweetened (2-2½ oz). Lemon extract is printed twice in Part Two; 1 teaspoon appears to be intended.
- "Boil 12 minutes" is a proxy for temperatureTwelve minutes on a coal range is not twelve minutes on a modern burner. Use a thermometer and cook each batch to the soft-ball stage, 236-240F, whatever the clock says.
- Stirring constantly is deliberateUnlike classic fudge, which is boiled undisturbed, both parts here are stirred throughout and then beaten.
- Beat until creamy, then move fastBeat off the heat only until the gloss dulls and the mass thickens. Past that point it seizes in the pan; "pour quickly" is the operative instruction.
- Cream of tartarA pinch inverts some of the sugar and guards against a grainy result. Still sold in the spice aisle; a few drops of lemon juice does the same job.
- Dromedary CocoanutPackaged shredded dried coconut, the brand's own product. Any unsweetened desiccated or shredded coconut substitutes directly; if you use the sweetened flaked kind, expect a noticeably sweeter top layer.
- Pan and yieldA buttered 8-inch square tin gives two layers of good depth and roughly 24 to 30 bars. Line it with parchment if you would rather lift the slab out whole before cutting.
Dromedary was the trade name of the Hills Brothers Company of New York, which built its business on packaged dates and shredded coconut and gave away small recipe booklets to teach cooks what to do with them. Layered candies of this kind were a staple of such booklets in the early twentieth century, when home candy-making was a common domestic accomplishment. The pairing of coconut with lemon extract rather than vanilla is characteristic of the period, when bottled extracts were cheap and used freely to distinguish one panful of boiled sugar from the next.