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Uncooked Candies: Fondant
Uncooked Cream Fondant 2 tablespoons heavy cream 1 teaspoon corn syrup 1 cup confectioners' sugar Flavors Colors Put cream and light-colored corn syrup in a bowl, add sifted sugar gradually, stirring until smooth, and add as much sugar as is necessary to make a stiff paste. Add flavoring or coloring as desired and use as a filling for dates, fruits, nuts, or as centers for bonbons or chocolates. It may be warmed (but not made hot) over hot water, and nuts, cherries, grapes, sections of orange, and fondant centers be dipped in it. It will have to be kept over the hot water, stirred constantly, and frequently put for a few moments over the fire. Uncooked Egg Fondant White 1 egg 1/2 tablespoon cold water 3/4 teaspoon vanilla 2 cups confectioners' sugar Put egg white, water, and flavoring in a bowl, and beat until well blended. Sift sugar and add one spoonful at a time, stirring until well mixed, before each addition. Continue adding a spoonful at a time until mixture is very stiff, then take out on a board, and knead with the hands until perfectly smooth. Use as stuffing for dates, for nut creams, or for centers for chocolates and bonbons.
Two shortcut fondants that skip the boiled-sugar stage entirely. The cream version is straightforward; the egg version rests on raw, uncooked egg white and should not be made from this text.
- The egg fondant is the problemThe white of one egg is beaten with water and sugar and then eaten without ever being heated. Sugar at this concentration slows but does not eliminate Salmonella, and the candy is typically held at room temperature for days while it is stuffed into dates and dipped. If you want an egg-white fondant, use a current recipe written around pasteurized egg white.
- The cream fondant is fine, with a caveatModern heavy cream is pasteurized, so the cream version carries no raw-egg risk. It is still a fresh-dairy sweet: keep the finished centers refrigerated and eat them within a few days rather than storing them like boiled fondant, which keeps for weeks.
- The hinge: add the sugar slowlyThe cream version says to add sifted sugar gradually, the egg version a spoonful at a time, stirring smooth before each addition. Tipping the sugar in all at once tends to give a lumpy, grainy mass, and only the egg fondant gets a kneading stage to work it smooth.
- "Light-colored corn syrup"This is plain light corn syrup, sold as such today. Its job is to keep the sugar from crystallizing and to give the paste a little pliability; golden syrup or glucose syrup will work, honey will not behave the same way.
- Confectioners' sugar has changedModern powdered sugar generally contains a few percent cornstarch as an anti-caking agent. Sift it as directed; the lumps are real.
- "Warmed but not made hot"Over hot, not boiling, water. Overheated fondant thins and then grains. The instruction to return it "over the fire" for a few moments means brief direct reheating, which is where it can catch if left too long.
- Dipped fondant is not chocolateFruit and nuts dipped in this coating stay soft and slightly tacky; it sets by drying, not by tempering. Let dipped pieces air-dry on parchment for several hours in a cool room, and do not expect a snap or a shine.
- YieldOne cup of sugar plus 2 tablespoons cream gives roughly 5 to 6 ounces of paste, though the recipe tells you to add as much more sugar as it takes to stiffen, so the final quantity varies; expect enough to stuff a couple of dozen dates.
Fondant proper is boiled sugar syrup taken to the soft-ball stage and then agitated as it cools so it crystallizes into a fine white paste, and it is the foundation of nearly every filled chocolate and bonbon of the commercial confectioner. Uncooked fondant is the domestic workaround: finely milled confectioners' sugar, cheap and widely available by the late nineteenth century, could be bound with cream or egg white into something close enough to the real thing to be made at home without a thermometer or a marble slab. Candy cookbooks of this era were written for exactly that audience, offering these quick versions as a concession to the beginner. The list of uses here is the standard repertoire of the period's home confectioner: stuffed dates, nut creams, fruit dipped in soft coating, and centers to be enrobed in chocolate.