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Tutti-Frutti Candy
Fill an oiled border-mould with three layers of melted fondant. Have bottom layer maple, well mixed with English walnut meat; the second layer colored pink, flavored with rose, and mixed with candied cherries cut in quarters and figs finely chopped; the third layer white, flavored with vanilla, mixed with nuts, candied cherries cut in quarters, and candied pineapple cut in small pieces. Cover mould with oiled paper, and let stand over night. Remove from mould, and place on a plate covered with a lace paper napkin. Fill centre with Bonbons and Glacé Nuts. 2 cups sugar Glacé Nuts 1 cup boiling water 1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar Put ingredients in a smooth saucepan, stir, place on range, and heat to boiling-point. Boil without stirring until syrup begins to discolor, which is 310° F. Wash off sugar which adheres to sides of saucepan, as in making fondant.
Remove saucepan from fire, and place in larger pan of cold water to instantly stop boiling. Remove from cold water and place in a saucepan of hot water during dipping . Take nuts separately on a long pin, dip in syrup to cover, remove from syrup, and place on oiled paper.
Glacé Fruits For Glacé Fruits, grapes, strawberries, sections of mandarins and oranges, and candied cherries are most commonly used. Take grapes separately from clusters, leaving a short stem on each grape. Dip in syrup made as for Glacé Nuts, holding by stem with pincers. Remove to oiled paper. Glacé fruits keep but a day, and should only be attempted in cold and clear weather
Two related confections sit on this page: a layered fondant ring built in a mould overnight, and the hard-crack sugar syrup used to glaze nuts and fruit. Both depend on fondant you make (or buy) separately, and both are governed by the weather.
- Fondant is assumed, not givenThe Boston Cooking-School Cook Book gives fondant as its own recipe elsewhere in the confections chapter; this page expects you to have a batch already ripened. Commercial rolled fondant will not substitute — you want poured fondant, warmed gently over hot water until it flows, never over direct heat, or it will grain and turn dull.
- Border-mouldA ring mould, roughly the shape of a modern angel-food or savarin pan, so the finished candy comes out as a wreath with a hollow centre to fill with bonbons. A 6-cup metal ring mould is about right; oil it lightly with a flavourless oil, not butter.
- Building the layersEach layer must be set enough to bear the next without the colours bleeding, but not so hard that they refuse to bond. Pour the maple layer, let it firm to the touch, then pour the pink, then the white. Working too fast is the usual failure.
- 310°F is hard crackFor the glacé syrup, use a candy thermometer rather than watching for discolouration. At 310°F the sugar is at hard crack and just at the edge of caramelising; a few degrees more and it will taste scorched. Wash the pan sides with a wet pastry brush to stop crystals seeding the whole batch.
- Stopping the boilThe plunge into cold water is not optional. Residual heat in a heavy pan will carry the syrup past 310°F in seconds. Then hold the pan over hot — not boiling — water so the syrup stays fluid through the dipping without cooking further.
- "Cold and clear weather"This is the hinge of the whole page. Hard-crack sugar is hygroscopic; on a humid day the glaze goes tacky within the hour and the fruit weeps. Air conditioning helps, but a damp summer afternoon will defeat both the glacé work and the fondant.
- Glacé fruit is a same-day itemThe book is right that these keep about a day. Moisture from inside the grape or strawberry migrates outward and dissolves the shell. Dip within a few hours of serving and leave them uncovered on oiled paper — a sealed box is the fastest way to ruin them.
- Candied fruit and colourCandied cherries and pineapple are still sold, usually as glacé fruit in the baking aisle; rinse and dry the syrup off before chopping or it will thin the fondant. Rose flavouring means rose water or rose extract; extract is far stronger than rose water, so add a little at a time and taste as you go.
Tutti-frutti — Italian for "all fruits" — attached itself in nineteenth-century America to anything studded with mixed candied fruit and nuts, from ice cream to chewing gum to this layered fondant. The recipe belongs to a moment when confectionery was moving out of the professional candy shop and into the ambitious home kitchen: reliable thermometers, refined granulated sugar and cheap imported candied fruit made work that had once required an apprenticed confiseur possible on a home range. The presentation instructions are as much the point as the candy — a lace paper napkin, a moulded wreath, a hollow centre heaped with bonbons and glacé nuts. This is a dish for a reception or a Christmas table, and the book's placement of it in the confections chapter, immediately alongside the fondant and glacé syrup it depends on, shows a curriculum at work rather than a list: master fondant, master the sugar stages, then assemble something showy from both.