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Uncooked Candies: Orange
Orange Cream Grated rind 1/2 orange 1 tablespoon orange juice 1 teaspoon lemon juice Yolk 1 egg 2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar Before cutting the orange, wipe carefully, and grate the yellow part only from the skin; then cut the orange in two and extract the juice. Mix rind and fruit juice, let stand ten minutes, and strain. Add slowly to the egg yolk, and when well mixed add sugar gradually until stiff enough to knead. Knead until smooth, and use for date, nut, prune, or cherry creams, or for centers of chocolates or bonbons.
Prune Creams Large prunes Orange juice Orange fondant or orange cream Granulated sugar Wash prunes, soak until plump in orange juice to cover, then steam until soft. Drain, remove stones, fill prunes with fondant rolled into balls a little larger than a prune stone, close the prunes, and roll in granulated sugar. Decorated Peppermints White 1 egg 1/2 tablespoon cold water 2 drops oil of peppermint Confectioners' sugar Put white of egg, cold water, and peppermint in a bowl, beat until very light, and add sugar a tablespoon at a time, beating between each addition, until mixture is stiff enough to hold its shape. Reserve one third of the mixture, and add sugar slowly to the remainder until it is stiff enough to knead. Work it with the hands until smooth, put on a board, roll out one eighth inch thick, and cut with a small round cutter. Decorate with the remaining mixture, colored pink, blue, lavender, yellow, or green, forced through paper tubes, making tiny roses, forget-me-nots, violets, or sweet peas, with stems and leaves on each mint Children will amuse themselves for hours making original designs with different colored frostings, and will exhibit their results with the greatest pride at the close of the happy afternoon. Half a dozen paper cones may be provided and filled with different colored frostings. If color pastes are not at hand, a bit of melted chocolate may be used in one portion, the yolk of an egg in another; a color tablet from a box of gelatine, dissolved in a few drops of water, will answer very well to color a third portion. Potato Cocoanut Candy 1 medium sized potato 2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar 2 cups shredded cocoanut 1 teaspoon vanilla Chocolate Cook potato in boiling water until soft, and force through a coarse sieve or a potato ricer. There should be half a cup of potato. To this add sugar, cocoanut, and vanilla, working together until well mixed. Press one inch thick into small bread pan, and spread top with a thin layer of melted bitter chocolate or sweet chocolate. When chocolate is firm, cut in small squares. This can be varied by using nuts or fruits instead of cocoanut. Uncooked Strawberry Creams 1/2 cup strawberries Sifted confectioners' sugar 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice Wash and hull strawberries, sprinkle with half a cup of confectioners' sugar, and let stand half an hour. Mash, rub through a fine sieve, add lemon juice, and stir in, a tablespoon at a time, enough more confectioners' sugar to make mixture stiff enough to shape. Make into small balls, and roll in granulated sugar, or roll out in a sheet one fourth inch thick, cut with small round cutter, and roll in sugar, or dip in melted coating chocolate. Other fruit, or syrup from a well-flavored jar of fruit, may be used instead of strawberries.
Walnut Creams Fondant English walnut meats Use any of the recipes for cooked or uncooked fondant, color and flavor as desired, shape in small balls, using one tablespoon of fondant for each ball. Press half of a walnut meat firmly on each side, and roll edges in granulated sugar, either plain or colored.
Maple, vanilla, or coffee flavor are good, or raspberry flavor and pink color paste may be used.
Pecan Creams Follow recipe for Walnut Creams, using pecan nut meats in place of walnuts.
A cluster of "uncooked" candies — sugar bound with fruit juice, egg, or potato instead of boiled syrup. Two of them (Orange Cream and Decorated Peppermints) are built on raw egg that is never heated, and those should not be made from this text; the others translate straightforwardly.
- The raw egg problemOrange Cream carries a raw yolk and Decorated Peppermints a raw white, kneaded into sugar and then held at room temperature for hours — in the peppermint recipe, deliberately, while children pipe decorations. Sugar at that concentration slows but does not reliably stop Salmonella, and neither candy is ever brought to any temperature at all. Use a current recipe for royal icing or fondant made with pasteurised egg product if you want this effect.
- Egg also appears as a colouringThe note about using "the yolk of an egg" to tint one portion of frosting yellow adds a second uncooked egg to a sweet meant for children. The same objection applies.
- What is safe herePotato Cocoanut Candy, Uncooked Strawberry Creams, Prune Creams and the walnut and pecan creams contain no egg and are fine, provided the fondant used is a cooked sugar fondant rather than the orange cream above.
- Oil of peppermintTwo drops is not a casual measurement: the oil is far stronger than the extract sold beside vanilla, so if you substitute extract you will need considerably more, added a little at a time by taste.
- Confectioners' sugarIt usually contains a little starch to keep it loose. Sifting matters here: unsifted lumps will not dissolve in a cold mixture and show as grit.
- CocoanutThe shredded coconut called for was generally unsweetened and fairly dry. Modern sweetened flaked coconut will make the potato candy sweeter and wetter; unsweetened desiccated or shredded coconut is closer.
- Bitter chocolate and coating chocolate"Bitter chocolate" is unsweetened baking chocolate. "Coating chocolate" means chocolate sold for melting and dipping; a modern compound coating, or properly tempered dark chocolate, will serve.
- Potato quantityThe half cup of riced potato is the figure that matters, not the "medium sized potato." Cook a large one, measure, and discard the excess; too much potato and the candy will not set, too little and it turns to dry sugar paste. Riced potato that has cooled slightly mixes more smoothly than hot.
- Prune creamsModern dried prunes are usually soft enough that soaking in orange juice and a brief steam — five to ten minutes over simmering water — is plenty. Steaming until genuinely soft, as written, risks bursting the skins.
- Paper tubes and conesThese are cornets rolled from parchment or greaseproof paper, the disposable ancestor of a piping bag. A small round tip in a bag does the same job; the effect wanted is a bead of icing about the size of a lentil.
- YieldsTwo cups of confectioners' sugar in the Orange Cream makes enough to fill or cut perhaps 30 to 40 small pieces; the peppermints give no sugar quantity at all, so the yield there depends on how much you work in. The potato candy, pressed an inch thick in a small loaf pan, gives roughly two dozen squares.
Uncooked or "raw" fondant put confectionery within reach of cooks with no candy thermometer and no marble slab. Boiled fondant demands both; a bowl of sifted confectioners' sugar bound with fruit juice, egg, or riced potato demands neither, and gives a pliable paste that behaves much like the real thing for stuffing dates and prunes or centring chocolates. Potato-bound sugar candy survives in the Irish and Pennsylvania German "potato candy" made with coconut or peanut butter, where the starch supplies body and a faint chew that pure sugar cannot. The peppermint recipe is the clearest window on the book's period: candy-making offered as a supervised children's activity, with instructions for improvising food colouring from melted chocolate, an egg yolk, or a dye tablet out of a gelatine box, for when colour pastes were 'not at hand'.