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Favors: Christmas
Sew up the opening, and use for decoration on a Christmas tree. Candy Animals Cut figures of animals, such as elephants, dogs, or horses, from white tarlatan, leaving an opening on the back. Fill with candies, using sticks for legs and other candies for the bodies. Make eyes and ears as suggested for candy dolls, sew up the opening, and use on Christmas trees. Or use wintergreen wafer mixture or fondant, roll on marble slab, and cut out with animal shaped cutters. Paint on the features with melted chocolate. Raisin Turtles Select large plump raisins, insert a whole clove stuck through a currant for the head, four cloves for claws, and the small end of a clove for the tail. These may be used on top of a box of candy, or as a decoration for frosted cake or white mints.
Christmas Cards 1 teaspoon gelatine 2 teaspoons cold water 3 teaspoons boiling water Few drops oil of wintergreen 1 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar Soak gelatine five minutes in cold water, dissolve in boiling water, and strain. Add flavoring and sifted confectioners' sugar, with enough more sugar to make stiff. Put mixture on board dredged with sifted confectioners' sugar, knead until perfectly smooth, then roll as thin as possible. Cut in circles two inches in diameter, or in pieces the size of visiting cards. To one small portion of trimmings add a bit of green coloring, knead; roll out, and cut or shape like small holly leaves. Color remaining trimmings bright red, and shape like holly berries.
Soak one teaspoon gelatine in two teaspoons cold water, and dissolve by standing over hot water. Brush under sides of leaves and berries with dissolved gelatine, and arrange on cards in an attractive design. This mixture may be cut in any desired shape, and left undecorated if preferred.
Three small projects run together here: cloth animals stuffed with loose candy, clove-and-raisin turtles, and a gelatine-and-sugar pastille dough cut into cards. Only the last is a true candy recipe, and it is the one worth your time.
- Wintergreen oilBuy a food-grade flavouring oil labelled for confectionery. Pure oil of wintergreen sold as a liniment or essential oil is concentrated methyl salicylate and is not intended to be eaten; a few drops in a batch this size is the whole of what the recipe wants, and the bottle should be kept well away from children.
- TarlatanA stiff, open-weave cotton gauze, sized with starch, once sold by the yard for millinery and fancy work. It is not a food-contact fabric by any modern standard. If you want a candy-filled animal, use cellophane or a food-safe bag inside the shape.
- Cloves and currantsThe raisin turtles are table decoration, not eating candy. Whole cloves are hard, sharp and overwhelmingly strong; anyone picking one off a frosted cake should know to remove the legs first, and they are a choking hazard for small children.
- The gelatine cardsOne teaspoon of gelatine is a little under half a standard quarter-ounce envelope (about 2 1/4 teaspoons). Soak in the cold water until it swells, then dissolve fully in the boiling water and strain before the sugar goes in — undissolved granules will show as gritty specks in a paste this pale.
- Working the pasteThe hinge of the recipe is kneading to a smooth, non-tacky dough before rolling. Add confectioners' sugar a spoonful at a time; the finished paste should feel like firm marzipan. Too little sugar and it will not hold a cut edge, too much and it cracks when rolled thin.
- Rolling surfaceThe recipe dredges a board with sifted confectioners' sugar; marble is useful because it stays cool, but any smooth counter dusted the same way will do. Roll as thin as you can and cut promptly; the surface skins over quickly.
- ColouringLiquid colourings were usual in recipes of this period. Gel or paste colours are better here because they tint the dough without loosening it — a few drops of liquid red can make the trimmings sticky enough to need more sugar.
- Drying and yieldThe recipe gives none. Expect roughly two dozen two-inch rounds from 1 1/4 cups of sugar. Leave the finished cards on a rack in a dry room overnight so they firm up before stacking, with parchment between layers.
Gelatine pastilles of this kind sit halfway between candy and craft, and that is exactly where the American Christmas tree of the period wanted them. Before commercial glass ornaments were cheap and universal, trees were hung with edible and homemade things: paper cornucopias of sugarplums, strung popcorn and cranberries, gilded nuts, and small stitched bags of tarlatan or net filled with sweets — the fabric animals described here are a domestic version of the candy containers sold by confectioners. The dough, a simple mixture of gelatine and confectioners' sugar, is close kin to the pastes used for moulded cake ornaments and for pastilles sold at druggists' counters; wintergreen, peppermint and rose were all common flavourings. Cutting it "the size of visiting cards" is a period touch in itself, from an era when a calling card had a conventional size.