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Cinnamon Bars
White 1 egg ½ teaspoon cinnamon 10 ozs. almond paste 5 ozs. confectioners' sugar Mix same as Macaroons. Dredge a board with sugar, knead mixture slightly, and shape in a long roll. Pat, and mixture slightly, and shape in a long roll. Pat, and roll one-fourth inch thick, using a rolling-pin. After rolling the piece should be four inches wide. Spread with frosting made of white of one egg and two-thirds cup confectioners' sugar beaten together until stiff enough to spread. Cut in strips four inches long by three-fourths inch wide. This must be quickly done, as a crust soon forms over frosting. To accomplish this, use two knives, one placed through mixture where dividing line is to be made, and the other used to make a clean sharp cut on both sides of first knife. Knives should be kept clean by wiping on a damp cloth. Remove strips as soon as cut, to a tin sheet, greased with lard and then floured. Bake twenty minutes on centre grate in a slow oven.
An almond-paste bar of the marzipan-cookie family, mixed like a macaroon and iced before baking rather than after. Two things decide whether it works: the stiffness of the icing and the very low oven.
- The hinge: cut fast, ice stiffThe frosting must be beaten to a spreadable but genuinely stiff royal icing, and the strips cut before it skins over. The two-knife method described is worth following literally — one knife held in place as a guide, the second making the cut on either side of it — because dragging a single blade through setting icing tears it.
- Weights, not cupsThe almond paste and sugar are given by weight: 10 oz paste is about 285 g, 5 oz confectioners' sugar about 140 g (roughly 1¼ cups, though sifted volume varies). Use a scale. The two-thirds cup of sugar for the frosting is volume and is about 80 g.
- Almond paste vs. marzipanAlmond paste is roughly half almonds by weight and only lightly sweetened; marzipan carries considerably more sugar. Canned or tubed almond paste from the baking aisle is the closer product; marzipan's extra sugar is likely to slacken the mixture.
- "Mix same as Macaroons"The macaroon method in this kind of book means working the almond paste smooth with the sugar and the egg white to a firm, workable paste; check the book's own macaroon recipe for the order in which they go in. Add the white a little at a time — pastes differ in moisture and the whole white is sometimes more than is needed.
- Slow ovenThe book gives no numbers; 'slow oven' is conventionally taken as somewhere around 275–300F. These are meant to dry and set rather than brown; the icing should stay pale and matte, so keep the heat low.
- The greased and floured tin sheetA baking sheet greased with lard and dusted with flour. Parchment on a heavy sheet does the same job with less risk of the sugary undersides sticking. Silicone mats work but give a softer bottom.
- ShapingKnead only slightly on a board dredged with confectioners' sugar, not flour, then roll to a strip exactly ¼ inch thick and 4 inches wide. Cut across into ¾-inch fingers, which gives roughly 30 to 36 bars from this quantity.
- KeepingThey firm as they cool and improve after a day in a tin. Almond paste keeps them moist for several days.
Cinnamon bars sit close to the German and Austrian tradition of spiced almond confections — Zimtsterne and their relatives — in which ground almonds, sugar and egg white are bound without flour or butter and finished with a stiff white icing baked to a dry shell. Fannie Farmer's book was published for the Boston Cooking School in 1896. Almond paste at the turn of the century was a comparatively costly article, which tended to put bars like these in the category of Christmas and company baking.