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Dipped Walnuts
Melt fondant and flavor. Dip halves of walnuts as bonbon centres are dipped. Halves of pecan or whole blanched almonds may be similarly dipped.
A three-line recipe that assumes you have already read the fondant and bonbon-dipping instructions a few pages earlier. Everything hinges on the temperature of the fondant.
- The hinge: fondant temperatureMelt the fondant in a bowl over hot, not boiling, water. Standard dipping guidance keeps it around 105F to 110F; much hotter and the coating tends to dry dull and sticky rather than setting to a firm matte shell. The recipe itself specifies nothing beyond "melt."
- Thinning itFondant stiffens as it stands. Add hot water a few drops at a time, or a teaspoon of sugar syrup, rather than more heat. It should coat a spoon and flow off in a ribbon.
- "As bonbon centres are dipped"The technique referred to: drop the nut in, turn it once with a two-tined dipping fork or a regular fork, lift, tap off the excess against the rim, and slide it onto waxed paper. Drawing the fork away leaves a small tail on top, a common finish on hand-dipped work.
- FlavoringThe recipe says only "flavor" and gives no quantity; vanilla, almond extract or strong coffee are the usual choices, used sparingly. Add flavoring after melting, off the heat, and stir gently to avoid whipping in air.
- The nutsUse fresh halves and taste one first; walnuts and pecans go rancid quietly and the sugar will not hide it. The recipe uses them raw and unblanched (except the almonds); if toasted, they must be cooled completely. They must be cold and dry or the fondant will slide off.
- ConditionsSugar work fails in humid air. On a damp day the coating will stay tacky no matter how carefully the fondant was handled; wait for a dry day, and never refrigerate the finished pieces.
- Yield and keepingThe recipe gives no yield. Once set, layer the pieces between waxed paper in a tin at cool room temperature; they hold a week or two.
Fondant dipping was a mainstay of American home candy-making around 1900, and this recipe reflects a book organized so that one master preparation, the boiled fondant, feeds a number of short entries like this one. Dipped nuts sat at the easy end of that range: no molding, no centers to shape, just a good nut and a well-handled coating. The walnut half was a common item in boxed assortments, and the pairing survives in the maple-walnut and coffee-walnut creams still sold by some confectioners. Commercial pecan growing in the South expanded in the later nineteenth century, which is one reason pecans appear here alongside walnuts.