Home › New Year Dinners › Christmas Fruit Paste
Christmas Fruit Paste
2 teaspoons cornstarch 2 tablespoons cold water 1/2 cup corn syrup 1 tablespoon gelatine 2 tablespoons cold water 1 tablespoon orange juice 1/2 cup nuts 1/2 cup dates 1/2 cup raisins Dissolve the cornstarch in 2 tablespoons of cold water. Put the corn syrup in a granite kettle and heat it to the boiling point. Add the dissolved cornstarch. Soak the gelatine in 2 tablespoons of cold water and 1 tablespoon of orange juice, for 1/2 hour. Add to it the hot syrup and remove from the fire. Stir until the gelatine is well dissolved. Add the nuts and fruits. Pour into cake pan that has been well dusted with powdered sugar and cornstarch (1/2 of each). Cool and cut in 3/4 in squares. Roll in powdered sugar.
A gelatine-set fruit and nut confection in the Turkish delight family, thickened with a little cornstarch rather than boiled to a sugar stage. It needs no candy thermometer, but it does need patience while it sets.
- The hinge: keep the gelatine off the heatThe syrup goes to the softened gelatine and the pan comes off the fire immediately. Gelatine held at a boil loses setting strength, and this mixture has nothing else to firm it.
- Granite kettleThat means a graniteware pan, the speckled enamel-on-steel ware standard in early twentieth-century kitchens. Any nonreactive saucepan works; a heavy-bottomed one keeps the syrup from scorching.
- Gelatine measureOne tablespoon of granulated gelatine is a little more than a standard 1/4-ounce envelope. Sprinkle it over the water and juice rather than dumping it in a lump, and give it the full half hour to swell.
- Cornstarch slurryStir the cornstarch and cold water again just before adding, since it settles fast. Add it to the boiling syrup in a thin stream while stirring or it will set in threads.
- Pan and dustingAn 8-inch square pan gives squares about half an inch thick; a loaf pan gives a taller, more traditional cube. Dust the pan generously with the sugar-and-cornstarch mixture and reserve some for the cut faces, which stay tacky until coated.
- Setting time"Cool" here means several hours at room temperature or two to three in the refrigerator, until the paste is firm enough that a knife leaves a clean edge. Cutting early smears the fruit through the jelly.
- Fruit and nutsChop the dates, raisins and nuts small and fairly evenly, or the slab will not cut into tidy squares. Stir them in as the mixture begins to thicken so they stay suspended instead of sinking.
- Yield and keepingStore between layers of waxed paper in a tin; in humid air the sugar coating weeps and the pieces need re-rolling.