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Chocolate Hearts
Melt, by standing over hot water, three ounces of unsweetened chocolate; add a pound of sifted powdered sugar and mix thoroughly; work to a stiff yet pliable paste with the unbeaten whites of three eggs (or less), adding vanilla to flavor. If the paste seems too soft add more sugar. Break off in small pieces and roll out about one-fourth of an inch thick, sprinkling the board and paste with granulated sugar instead of flour.
Cut with a tiny heart-shaped cake cutter (any other small cake cutter will do), and place on pans oiled just enough to prevent sticking. Bake in a very moderate oven. When done, they will feel firm to the touch, a solid crust having formed over the top. They should be very light, and will loosen easily from the pan after being allowed to stand a moment to cool. The success of these cakes depends upon the oven, which should be not as cool as for meringues, not quite so hot as for sponge cake. If properly made, they are very excellent and but little labor. Use the yolks for chocolate whips.-Amelia Sulzbacher.
This is a baked chocolate confection closer to a meringue-sugar paste than a cookie dough, and the original is right that the oven is the whole game. Everything else is straightforward.
- Oven temperature"Very moderate," described as hotter than meringues but cooler than sponge cake, points to somewhere around 300-325F on a modern dial. The recipe gives no number, so treat that as a starting point and judge by the crust, as the original tells you to.
- Powdered sugarRead this as modern confectioners' sugar; note that it contains cornstarch, where the period article was simply finely ground sugar. A pound is roughly 4 to 4 1/2 cups sifted. The recipe itself allows for adding more sugar if the paste comes out too soft.
- Unsweetened chocolateThree ounces equals three of the old one-ounce squares. Melt it in a bowl over barely simmering water and let it cool to just warm before adding the sugar.
- The egg whites"The unbeaten whites of three eggs (or less)" is the vaguest measure in the recipe, and deliberately so. Add them a spoonful at a time; the paste should be stiff enough to hold a thumbprint but roll without cracking, and you may need only two whites with today's larger eggs.
- Rolling in sugar, not flourThis matters. Flour would leave a raw, chalky film on the surface; granulated sugar keeps it glossy and dissolves into the crust. Work with small pieces and keep the rest covered so it does not skin over.
- DonenessA firm top crust is the goal, not dryness throughout; the recipe says they should feel firm and be very light. It gives no time, so check early and often, since these go from set to hard quickly.
- Pan lining"Oiled just enough" was the option available to the original cook. Parchment is better and removes the guesswork, and the cooling pause before lifting still applies.
- Yield and keepingA pound of sugar makes a large batch. Stored airtight they keep well for a week and firm up as they sit.
Cookies like these belong to a family of European sugar-and-egg-white pastes that also produced macaroons and kisses, all leavened by nothing but the air and moisture in the whites and all utterly dependent on a slack oven. That dependence is why the recipe spends more words on judging oven heat than on anything else: writing in the era of the coal range, Amelia Sulzbacher could not give a number, only a comparison to two baked goods her readers already knew by feel. The closing instruction to use the yolks for chocolate whips is equally characteristic of the period, when no cook would throw away three yolks.