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Uncooked Candies: Creams
Fondant may be colored by the addition of pink, green, yellow, lavender, or orange color paste, and other flavors may be used instead of vanilla. Almond Creams Almonds Fondant Plain or colored granulated sugar Blanch almonds and place one on each side of a small ball of fondant, or cover almonds with fondant, shape like a very small egg, and roll in granulated sugar.
Cherry Creams I Fondant Candied cherries Take fondant, cooked or uncooked, of any color or flavor, roll out one eighth inch thick, shape with round cutter one and one half inches in diameter, and roll around cherry, leaving a small portion exposed. Place in paper cases. Vanilla, coffee, and pistachio fondant look particularly well with the cherries.
Cherry Creams II Select as many firm, smooth, candied cherries as are desired. Cut each cherry, starting at the open end, into four sections, and separate into petals. Make a tiny hole at the other end, and insert a strip of angelica one and half inches long for a stem. Place a small ball of fondant between the petals, and arrange on a doily, or use on top of a box of bonbons.
Cherry Creams III Cut candied cherries almost in two; between the halves of each cherry place a flat ball of fondant, press together gently, and roll in coarse granulated sugar.
Uncooked Cocoanut Creams 3 tablespoons heavy cream Lavender color paste 1 cup confectioners' sugar 1/2 teaspoon violet essence or vanilla 1 cup shredded cocoanut Color the heavy cream a deep shade of lavender, add flavoring and cocoanut, and let stand ten minutes. Then add sifted sugar, heat over hot water until softened, and drop from the tip of a fork on wax paper, in rough balls the size of a chocolate cream. Leave until firm. Color paste may be omitted, or other colors may be used instead of lavender.
Coffee Creams 4 tablespoons water 2 tablespoons ground coffee 1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar Put water and coffee in a saucepan, bring to the boiling point, boil two minutes, and strain through double cheesecloth. Add sufficient confectioners' sugar to stiffen, and knead until smooth. Use for walnut, pecan, or cherry creams, as centers for chocolates or bonbons, or roll out one fourth inch thick, cut with a small round cutter, and roll in granulated sugar. Date Creams Dates Fondant Chopped nuts Wash dates and remove stones. Fondant, either cooked or uncooked, may be used. Flavor and color fondant as desired, roll in small cylinders, put into the dates where the stone was removed, and roll in granulated sugar. Pile on a bonbon dish, or pack in layers in a candy box with waxed paper between each layer. Chopped nuts may be mixed with the fondant, or the edge of the fondant projecting from the date may be dipped in chopped nuts. Uncooked Fudge 7 ounces sweet coating chocolate 1 tablespoon butter 1 cup confectioners' sugar 2 eggs 1 cup English walnut meats 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla Melt chocolate over hot water, add butter, sugar, yolks of eggs beaten until thick and lemon colored, whites of eggs beaten stiff, walnuts cut in pieces, and vanilla. Spread in buttered pan, and when firm cut in squares. This fudge is always soft and creamy.
A cluster of fondant-centre confections from the era when home candy-making meant a marble slab, a box of paper cases, and a jar of color paste. Most of these need only translation; the Uncooked Fudge at the end is the exception, and it is the reason for the warning above.
- The uncooked fudge is the problemTwo whole eggs, yolks and whites, are beaten and folded into chocolate that has only been melted over hot water — well under any temperature that would pasteurise them — and the mixture is then left to set and eaten cold. Melted chocolate does not sterilise egg, and the finished squares sit at room temperature for days. Salmonella risk aside, this is a raw-egg confection with no acid, no heat step and no refrigeration. Use a current recipe if you want a soft chocolate fudge.
- The other recipes are soundThe other recipes are sugar-and-fondant work. The coconut recipe contains three tablespoons of cream, briefly warmed over hot water with the sugar; if the fondant used for the almond, cherry and date creams is an uncooked one, it may contain raw egg white as well.
- Fondant, cooked or uncookedThe book assumes you have fondant on hand from an earlier page. Uncooked fondant is confectioners' sugar kneaded with cream or egg white until it takes a stiff, claylike body; cooked fondant is boiled syrup worked on a slab. Either will do here, but uncooked fondant is softer and slumps faster in a warm kitchen.
- Color pastePeriod color paste is the ancestor of modern gel food colouring, and gel is the correct substitute. Liquid supermarket colouring adds water and will loosen fondant noticeably; add it to the cream before the sugar goes in, as the coconut recipe does.
- CocoanutCocoanut is simply coconut. Period shredded coconut was generally drier than the bagged sweetened flake usual now. Unsweetened desiccated or shredded coconut gives the intended texture; sweetened flake will make the balls cloying.
- Violet essence and angelicaViolet essence is still sold by confectionery suppliers; it is potent, and half a teaspoon in one cup of sugar is already assertive. Angelica — the candied green stem used for the cherry-flower stems — has become genuinely scarce and is usually mail-order now. A strip of candied citron peel or a length of candied lemon rind reads much the same on a doily.
- Sweet coating chocolateIn the fudge recipe this means a sweetened dark couverture meant for dipping, roughly what is now sold as semisweet or dark coating chocolate. Seven ounces is about 200 g.
- Paper cases and yieldThe paper cases are petit four or bonbon cups. No yields are given anywhere in these recipes.
- Working temperatureFondant handles best in a cool, dry room. On a humid day the surface stays tacky and the granulated sugar coating dissolves into it; the cherry and date creams in particular are worth timing for dry weather.
Uncooked candies occupy a distinct corner of turn-of-the-century American cookery: confections built from confectioners' sugar, cream and flavouring rather than boiled syrup, requiring no thermometer and no judgement of the soft-ball stage. They were the sort of thing made at home for church sales, Christmas boxes and afternoon calls. The decorative impulse here is very much of its moment: candied cherries cut into petals with an angelica stem, bonbons in fluted paper cases, lavender coconut balls tinted with violet essence. Commercially prepared candied cherries and angelica, colour pastes and boxed confectioners' sugar had become available to the household by then, and this chapter is largely a catalogue of what could be assembled from them without lighting the range.