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Cream Nut Bars
Melt fondant and flavor, stir in any kind of nut meat, cut in pieces. Turn in an oiled pan, cool, and cut in bars with a sharp knife. Maple Fondant is delicious with nuts.
A two-line confection that assumes you already have a bowl of fondant in the pantry, as Farmer's readers did. Everything depends on how you melt it.
- Fondant is the whole recipeFondant here is the cooked sugar cream made elsewhere in the confections chapter: sugar and water boiled to the soft-ball stage (238F), cooled undisturbed, then worked with a paddle until it turns white and opaque. Commercial rolled fondant sold for cake covering is a different product and will not behave the same way.
- Melt over water, never over flameSet the fondant in a bowl over hot, not boiling, water and stir only until it flows. Above roughly 150F the sugar recrystallizes coarsely and the bars turn grainy and dull instead of setting with a smooth, short bite.
- Thin it if it stiffensA teaspoon or two of hot water, cream, or a liqueur will loosen fondant that has gone stiff in the bowl. Add it a few drops at a time; too much and the bars stay tacky and never firm up.
- FlavoringVanilla, a few drops of almond extract, or coffee essence all work. Add flavoring off the heat, since alcohol-based extracts lose much of their aroma in a warm bowl.
- The nutsWalnuts, pecans, almonds, or hazelnuts, coarsely chopped. The recipe asks for nothing beyond cutting them up; if you choose to toast them first, let them cool completely before stirring in, since warm nuts soften the fondant.
- Pan and oilingAn 8-inch square pan wiped with a neutral oil gives bars about half an inch thick. Parchment is easier still.
- Cut before it is fully hardScore the slab when it has set but still yields slightly to a fingernail, roughly 20 to 30 minutes. Fully hardened fondant shatters rather than cuts. Warming the knife blade in hot water and wiping it between cuts gives clean edges.
- Maple fondantThe variation Farmer points to is a fondant made with maple sugar or maple syrup in place of some or all of the granulated sugar. Use real maple syrup; pancake syrup is largely corn syrup with flavoring and will not crystallize into fondant.
- Yield and keepingThe recipe gives no quantities; as a rough guide, a pound of fondant with a cup of nuts will yield something like two dozen small bars. Store them layered between waxed paper in a tin at cool room temperature; refrigeration draws moisture to the surface and makes them sticky.
Fondant was a mainstay of the American home candy kitchen by the late nineteenth century, and Fannie Farmer's confections chapter treats it much as she treats a white sauce: make a batch, then spin a dozen sweets out of it. The technique came out of the professional French confiserie, where fondant (from fondre, to melt) meant a sugar paste worked to crystals fine enough to feel smooth on the tongue, and it spread in American households as refined sugar grew cheap and plentiful. The maple variation is the New England note: maple sugar was a regional sweetener with real standing in Massachusetts kitchens, and it was often paired with walnuts or butternuts.