French Fondant
The variety made from fondant is limitless. It is made with white and maple sugar. The white may be colored any shade and any flavor can be made; also any fruit or nuts can be used to give variety and delicious quality to this foundation. The fresh fruits, strawberries, grapes, cherries and also French fruit can be dipped with the melted fondant; marshmallow, nuts, candied orange and cherries are good coated with this candy. We give below the principle that will be best for beginners: 2 cups sugar. 2-3 cup water. 1/4 teaspoon cream tartar. Put sugar and water on fire and stir until begins to boil. Take out spoon and with brush dipped in cold water wash down sides to keep the sugar crystals from forming. Cover and boil five minutes. Put in cream tartar, cook until soft ball stage, by thermometer 238 degrees. When ready, turn out on marble slab dampened with water. Let stand until a dent can be made on surface. Then work the candy back and forth with wooden spatula to a white, smooth, creamy paste; knead with hands all together and put in earthen bowl, cover closely with damp cloth, put in cool place twenty-four hours. The fondant is not perfect when granular. Water can be added and cooked again.
A straightforward cooked fondant, and the numbers in it are still the numbers a candy maker would use. The only real difficulties are a typographical fraction and the equipment.
- "2-3 cup water"This is the printer's way of setting 2/3 cup — about 160 ml. It is not two to three cups; that much water would only lengthen the boil.
- The hinge: 238F and nothing above itSoft ball is the whole recipe. A few degrees over and the fondant sets hard and grainy instead of creamy. Use a calibrated digital thermometer and pull the pan off the heat the moment it reads 238F (114C).
- Washing down the sidesThe brush-and-cold-water step is not fussiness. A single sugar crystal clinging above the syrup line will seed the whole batch into a gritty mass. The five minutes covered does the same job by steam.
- Cream of tartarA quarter teaspoon inverts part of the sucrose and is what keeps the finished paste smooth. Do not leave it out, and do not add much more — excess invert sugar gives a fondant that never firms.
- If you have no marbleA large rimmed baking sheet, a granite countertop, or a heavy glass dish all work. What matters is a cool, non-absorbent surface with enough area to spread the syrup thin so it loses heat fast.
- "Until a dent can be made"Roughly 110F (43C), when the surface has skinned over and gives slightly under a fingertip. Working it hotter produces coarse crystals; working it cold makes it seize before it creams.
- The twenty-four hours is not optionalThe twenty-four hours -- Ripening under a damp cloth lets moisture equalise through the mass and the crystals settle to a finer, more even texture. Fondant used straight away is generally coarser.
- Melting for dippingWarm the ripened fondant in a bowl over hot, not boiling, water and keep it below about 150F (65C), thinning with a teaspoon of water or sugar syrup. Overheated fondant loses its gloss and sets dull and streaked.
- Dipped fresh fruit keeps badlyStrawberries, grapes and cherries weep juice through the coating within a few hours. Dip them the day they are served; nuts and candied peel keep for weeks in a tin.
- Yield and weatherTwo cups of sugar gives roughly a pound of fondant, enough for several dozen small centres. Work on a dry day -- fondant made in humid air stays sticky.
Fondant -- from the French fondre, to melt -- is the plain white sugar paste that stood behind much of the commercial candy of the period: the creamy centre inside a chocolate, the coating on a dipped cherry, the body of a peppermint patty. Giving the "principle" rather than a fixed sweet suits a moment when readers were being encouraged to make at home what they had previously bought at the confectioner's. The recipe states the candy stage as a thermometer number alongside the older cold-water test, a habit that spread among cookery writers as household thermometers became more common. The reference to "French fruit" appears to mean the imported glace fruits a well-stocked grocer carried at Christmas.