No. 3651

Vanilla Fondants

Fondants a la Vanille

Have some conical-shaped molds, with rounded tops, a quarter of an inch in diameter at their base and a quarter of an inch high; impress them into the starch. Put one pound of fondant (No. 58) in a sugar pan, add two tablespoonfuls of thirty-four degree syrup strongly flavored with vanilla and stand it on the fire to heat until the finger can yet be held in, then pour it into a spring funnel (Fig. 759) and run it through into the impressions in the starch; when the candies are cold and firm take them carefully from the starch, brush gently with a brush and stand them on a grate, then put away in a cold place. These can be dipped in fondant well flavored with vanilla.

← No. 3650 Chocolate Fondants Candies & Bonbons No. 3652 Fondants Dipped in Strawberry or Raspberry →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a starch-mogul recipe, the industrial-scale confectioner's method scaled to a hotel kitchen: impressions stamped into a tray of dry starch act as the molds, and warm fondant is run into them from a stoppered funnel. Nothing here is difficult, but two details decide whether it works.

Do not overheat the fondant"Until the finger can yet be held in" points to no more than hand-hot, perhaps 120-140F (50-60C). Heating fondant much beyond that dissolves the fine sugar crystals and it will set hard and dull rather than creamy; the usual guidance is to keep melted fondant below roughly 160F. Melt it slowly over a water bath and stir rather than beat, so you do not work in air.
Thirty-four degree syrupThat is a reading on the Baumé saccharometer, not a temperature: a dense sugar syrup of roughly 1.30 specific gravity, in the region of two parts sugar to one part water by weight, boiled to dissolve and cooled. Two tablespoons is only there to loosen the fondant and carry the vanilla; if you have no hydrometer, use a heavy simple syrup and add it a little at a time until the fondant just flows off the spoon in a ribbon.
Fondant (No. 58)Fondant of this period is sugar and water boiled to about the soft-ball stage (roughly 238-240F), poured out, cooled, then worked until it turns white and opaque. Commercial rolled fondant sold for cake covering is a different product — gum-stiffened and not suitable. Poured or "cream" fondant from a candy supplier is the correct substitute.
The starch trayUse plain cornstarch, dried thoroughly in a 200F oven for an hour or two and cooled, then sifted level into a shallow tray about an inch deep. Any moisture in the starch and the fondant will pit and stick. The molds are a plaster or wood board of small cones pressed in to leave the cavities; a quarter inch across and a quarter inch high is genuinely tiny, about the size of a pea.
The spring funnelA confectioner's drop funnel: a funnel with a dowel running down the spout that stops the flow when released, letting you deposit one cavity at a time. A small pitcher and a steady hand will work, as will a piping bag with a plain fine tip, though the deposits will be less even.
Setting and finishingLeave the tray undisturbed at cool room temperature for several hours or overnight; do not refrigerate, as condensation will dissolve the surface. Lift the pieces out, brush off the starch with a soft dry pastry brush, and let them sit on a rack for a few hours to form a thin crust before dipping.
VanillaFlavor the syrup, not the finished fondant, and use extract or a vanilla-infused syrup rather than seed-flecked paste — the specks show badly in a white centre this small. Vanilla flavor reads weak in cold sugar, so err on the strong side, as the original directs.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, where he was chef for over thirty years, and its confectionery chapter reads like a working manual because that is what it was: numbered, cross-referenced, and assuming a pastry department with starch trays, molding boards and hydrometers on hand. The starch-mogul method described here — stamping cavities into a bed of dried starch and depositing warm sugar into them — was the standard way to shape soft centres through the nineteenth century and is still, mechanized, how jelly beans and cream centres are made today. "Fondant" is simply the French present participle of fondre, to melt, and the word came into English confectionery vocabulary in the later nineteenth century along with the French pastry kitchens that used it. A vanilla centre was the plainest thing in the case, and the closing line — that they may also be dipped in vanilla fondant — is Ranhofer's way of noting that the same batch could serve as a bare bonbon or as the interior of a dipped one.