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Chocolate Cream Mints
Melt fondant over hot water; flavor with oil of peppermint and drop from the tip of a spoon on waxed paper. When cool dip in melted chocolate as directed under the recipe for Chocolate Creams.
A two-line recipe that assumes you already have fondant made and know how to dip chocolate. The whole thing hinges on heat control: fondant that gets too warm loses its fine crystal structure and sets grainy and dull.
- Keep the fondant below 140FKeep the fondant gently warm -- Melt it in a bowl set over hot — not boiling — water, stirring only enough to loosen it. Confectionery practice holds that overheating fondant (somewhere around 140F) dissolves the fine sugar crystals, so the centers reset coarse rather than creamy.
- Thin it if it stiffensFondant tightens as it sits over the water. A few drops of hot water or sugar syrup, worked in a little at a time, brings it back to a consistency that will drop from a spoon and spread into a round patty.
- Oil of peppermint is not extractThis means the essential oil, which is several times stronger than peppermint extract and oil-based rather than alcohol-based. Start with 2 or 3 drops per pound of fondant and taste; extract in the same quantity will taste weak and can thin the fondant.
- Let the centers dry, not just cool"When cool" understates it. Leave the dropped patties uncovered several hours or overnight until a firm skin forms on the surface, or they will slump and leak when they hit the warm chocolate.
- The dipping chocolateThe cross-reference sends you to the Chocolate Creams recipe, which is not reproduced here; whatever it directs, dipping chocolate needs temperature control. Modern tempering figures are: melt to about 115F, cool to 80F, rewarm to 88-90F for dark chocolate, a couple of degrees lower for milk. Untempered chocolate tends to set soft and dull and may develop gray bloom. Compound coating avoids the issue at the cost of flavor.
- Waxed paper still worksIt was in common use for candy work in this period and remains fine for the centers. For the dipped mints, parchment or a silicone mat releases more cleanly.
- YieldDepends entirely on how large you drop them; a pound of fondant will give several dozen teaspoon-sized patties, and you will want a generous quantity of chocolate for dipping since a dipping bowl needs more than ends up on the candy.
Fondant — sugar and water boiled to the soft-ball stage, then cooled undisturbed and worked until it turns opaque and creamy — was the backbone of American home candy-making from the 1880s onward, and cookbooks of Mrs. Fryer's generation typically gave one master fondant recipe followed by a run of variations: peppermints, wintergreens, walnut creams, coconut creams, and the chocolate-dipped versions. The chocolate cream mint belongs squarely in that run of variations.