No. 3364

Africans

Africains

Make a small lady finger preparation (No. 3377); pour it in a linen bag furnished with a quarter of an inch socket, and lay the cakes on paper in the shape of small rounds an inch and a quarter in diameter; place this paper on a baking sheet, and bake the cakes in a slow oven. As soon as they are done remove them from the sheet and let get cold on the paper, then take the biscuits off, scoop them out on the flat side, and fill in the empty space with pastry cream (No. 46); fasten them together in pairs and dip them entirely in icing (No. 102) flavored with vanilla, rose, coffee or chocolate, removing them with a fork. Drain well on a wire grate, then set them at the oven door an instant to gloss.

← No. 3363 Wafers with Almonds or Hazel-Nuts and with B Fancy Cakes — Petits Fours No. 3365 Amarettes →

For the Modern Kitchen

A two-part petit four: piped ladyfinger batter, hollowed and filled with pastry cream, then jacketed in fondant. The hinge is the fondant — it has to be warm and fluid but never hot, or it sets dull and grainy instead of glossy.

The linen bag and socketA pastry bag fitted with a plain round tip about 1/4 inch across. Pipe rounds 1 1/4 inches wide, spaced well apart, onto parchment rather than the plain paper Ranhofer used.
A slow ovenRanhofer gives no temperatures; a slow oven in period usage falls somewhere around 300°F. The point is to dry the little biscuits through without colouring them much beyond pale gold; at a higher heat the shells crack and the domes hollow unevenly.
Lifting them off the paperRanhofer's trick of sliding the paper off the hot sheet and letting the cakes cool on it is sound — the residual steam loosens them. On parchment they release cleanly once cold; on plain paper, brush the underside with a little water and wait a minute.
"Scoop them out on the flat side"Press a small melon baller or the tip of a paring knife into the flat base of each cooled biscuit and remove a shallow cavity. Do not go through the dome.
Pastry creamHis No. 46 is a standard flour-thickened crème pâtissière. Chill it fully and beat it smooth before piping, and use it sparingly — an overfilled pair will squeeze cream into the fondant coating.
The icingNo. 102 is poured fondant, not a confectioners'-sugar glaze. Warm it to about 100°F, thin with a little sugar syrup until it ribbons off the spoon, and flavour with vanilla, rosewater, coffee extract or melted chocolate. Overheated fondant loses its shine, so keep it barely warm to the touch.
Draining and glossingLift each cake out on a dipping fork, let the excess run off against the rim of the pan, and set it on a rack. The "instant at the oven door" is a few seconds of gentle warmth to set the surface — a warm spot near the stove does the same thing.
Yield and keepingThe recipe gives no quantities, so yield depends entirely on the lady finger preparation at No. 3377. Because of the cream filling they are a same-day sweet; refrigeration dulls the fondant.

A Little History

Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, and its petits fours chapter is essentially a catalogue of the French pastry repertoire as it stood in the second half of the nineteenth century — dozens of tiny cakes, each with a name that functions as shorthand for a shape or a finish rather than a description. Why these are called Africains is not explained; the name is sometimes linked to a dark chocolate or coffee coating, though Ranhofer himself offers vanilla and rose alongside those two. The technique is not new to him: the same piped biscuit à la cuiller batter served for ladyfingers, charlotte linings and small filled rounds alike. Assembling them in pairs around pastry cream and sealing the whole in fondant helped a fragile, quick-staling biscuit hold up on a buffet through a long service.