Fudge Sandwich
Melt on tin in oven, fudge or fresh chocolate creams until soft enough to be spread; spread wafer crackers with this filling, tie each two with white baby ribbon. Serve with lemonade.
A two-ingredient confection from the era when "sandwich" covered anything served between two flat things, including dessert. The only real technique here is controlling the heat so the fudge softens rather than seizes or scorching.
- The hinge: low, gentle heatFudge and chocolate creams are sugar-based fondants that scorch quickly and turn grainy if overheated. The recipe gives no temperature; the lowest setting the oven offers, on a sheet pan for a few minutes, should be enough -- check every minute and pull them the moment they slump. A microwave in five-second bursts does the same job with less risk.
- "Tin" means the panA tin here is simply a baking sheet or shallow tray. Line it with parchment and the softened candy lifts off cleanly instead of welding itself down.
- Fresh chocolate creamsThese were most likely soft fondant-centred candies from a confectioner's counter, bought fresh rather than boxed. Modern boxed chocolates with firm or liquid centres behave differently; plain fudge, or a fondant-centred cream, is the closest match.
- Wafer crackersThin, plain, unsweetened wafers of the water-biscuit type, not sugar wafers. Any thin crisp cracker or plain butter wafer works; the point is a bland, brittle contrast to a very sweet filling.
- The ribbonWhite baby ribbon is a narrow silk ribbon, about an eighth of an inch wide, tied around each pair as a party finish. Use a food-safe ribbon and treat it as decoration to be untied, not eaten.
- Assemble and coolSpread and press together while the filling is still soft, then let the pairs set at room temperature before tying. Chilled, the filling hardens and the crackers are apt to break when bitten.
- Yield and occasionThe original gives no quantity and no serving count. Allow roughly an ounce of fudge per pair of wafers and scale to the gathering; the ribbon and the lemonade point to a party rather than a meal.
Eva Greene Fuller's sandwich book belongs to a brief American vogue, often placed in the early decades of the twentieth century, when the sandwich escaped the lunch pail and became a fixture of the tea table, the card party and the church social. Under that pressure the word stretched: anything spread between two thin flat surfaces qualified, including these dessert assemblies of candy between crackers. The white baby ribbon is the tell. This is not food meant to satisfy hunger but a favour to be handed round, and the pairing with lemonade places it firmly at an afternoon gathering rather than a meal. Chocolate creams and fudge were themselves relatively new as everyday sweets, their spread generally traced to the growing availability of refined sugar and commercial chocolate.