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Chocolate Creams
Roll fondant into balls; dip them in melted chocolate and stand them to dry on waxed paper.
The necessary utensils are a wire fork and a very small double boiler. The chocolate when melted should come nearly to the top of the inner boiler. Melt the chocolate; cool to about 80° F.; drop a ball of fondant into the chocolate; with a fork push it below the surface; remove carefully with the fork.
This is a dipping method rather than a full recipe: it assumes you already have fondant made and cured, and that you know what chocolate to buy. The single number given — 80°F — is the whole technique in disguise.
- The 80°F is temperingMelting the chocolate and cooling it to about 80F is an early form of hand tempering, and taking chocolate down through that range is what encourages it to set glossy and snap rather than dull and streaky. Note that this recipe dips at 80F itself; modern practice for dark couverture is to melt to roughly 115F, cool while stirring to 80-82F, then warm back to 88-90F for dipping and hold it there.
- What "chocolate" meant hereThe recipe does not specify a type; dipping chocolate of this era was normally a sweetened coating chocolate sold in cakes, not chips. Modern chocolate chips contain stabilisers that resist flowing and will not give a thin coat; buy couverture or a good bar chocolate with cocoa butter as the only added fat.
- Never let water inA drop of water or steam from the double boiler will seize the chocolate into a grainy paste that cannot be recovered for dipping. Keep the water in the outer pan hot but not boiling, and keep the inner pan wider than the water beneath it.
- Why the chocolate must be deep"Nearly to the top of the inner boiler" is not fussiness — a deep, narrow pool lets you submerge a centre in one motion and lift it cleanly. A shallow pan means you roll the centre around and drag air and crumbs into the coating.
- The wire forkA dipping fork is two or three tines with wide gaps, or a small loop, so the excess drains off. A table fork works badly; a plastic-handled candy dipping fork or even a bent length of stiff wire is closer to what is meant.
- Fondant needs to rest firstFreshly cooked fondant is too soft to hold a ball. It should be kneaded, then ripened in a covered jar for at least a day so it firms and smooths; balls should be rolled and left uncovered an hour or two to form a light skin before dipping.
- Room conditionsDip in a cool, dry room, around 65F. A warm or humid kitchen will leave the shells tacky and grey-bloomed, and no amount of correct tempering will fix it.
- YieldA pound of fondant makes roughly 40 to 50 marble-sized centres; the chocolate that actually clings to them is a fraction of their weight, but you must melt considerably more than that to keep the pot deep enough to work in.
Fondant-centred chocolate creams were long a backbone of American home candy-making, once confectionery came within reach of an ordinary kitchen. Cooked fondant — soft-ball stage, cooled undisturbed, then beaten white — was treated as a pantry staple to be flavoured and coloured at will: peppermint, vanilla, rose, walnut, or coffee, all from the same batch. Home dipping declined once mass-produced boxed chocolates became inexpensive, but the 80-degree instruction preserved here points toward the same concern with working temperature that governs a professional chocolatier's tempering today.