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Chocolate Cream Dominoes
The white cream candy same as for chocolate drops. Roll it out thin and pour a layer of melted chocolate upon it. Cut when cold.
A two-line confectioner's note that assumes you already have a batch of fondant on the bench. The whole job is in the timing of the cut.
- The "white cream candy"This is fondant: sugar and water (usually with a little glucose or cream of tartar) boiled to the soft-ball stage, around 238F, cooled undisturbed to about 110F, then worked with a spatula until it turns opaque and stiff. Knead it smooth and let it rest before rolling. Shop-bought rolled fondant will behave, though it is sweeter and less creamy than the boiled kind.
- Roll it on whatA marble slab dusted with sifted confectioners' sugar, or between sheets of parchment. The recipe says only "thin"; a quarter inch or so is a reasonable reading, thick enough that the finished domino has some body against the chocolate layer.
- Temper the chocolateThe recipe says only "melted chocolate," but tempering matters here. Melt to about 115F, cool to 80F, rewarm to 88-90F for dark chocolate, or a couple of degrees lower for milk. Untempered chocolate will set soft and streaky and will smear when you cut.
- The hinge: cut at the right momentDo not wait until the chocolate is rock hard, despite the instruction to cut when cold. Let it set until it is firm but still yields to a fingernail, then cut through in one clean stroke with a long thin blade warmed in hot water and wiped dry. Fully hardened chocolate shatters and chips off the fondant edge.
- Domino proportionsStandard dominoes are twice as long as they are wide — roughly 1 by 2 inches gives a sensible sweet. Score the whole sheet first with a ruler, then cut.
- The pipsThe name only pays off if you add them. Pipe the dividing line and the dots in royal icing or thinned white fondant through a fine plain tube once the chocolate has set completely, and let them dry uncovered for an hour.
- Yield and keepingA pound of fondant rolled a quarter inch thick makes roughly three dozen dominoes. Store in a single layer in a cool room, not the refrigerator, where condensation will dull the chocolate and dissolve the icing pips.
Novelty shapes were the working capital of the American candy store at the turn of the last century, and dominoes were among the easiest to sell: the maker already had a slab of fondant and a pot of chocolate on the bench, and the only new work was ruling straight lines and piping white dots. One base cream could yield many named lines, which is why this recipe refers you back to the chocolate drops rather than repeating the fondant formula. Domino candies stayed in the American repertoire well into the twentieth century, and the name later attached itself to sugar itself: the Domino brand of refined sugar, named for its neat rectangular tablets, dates from the same era of squared-off, machine-tidy sweets.