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Chocolate Cream Drops
Two cupfuls of granulated sugar, one-half cup water, cream tartar size of a large pea; boil exactly five minutes after beginning to boil freely, in a covered basin, without stirring. Pour out into a dish to cool and when quite cool, work it on the sides of the dish with a spoon to a creamy texture; flavor with vanilla, then roll up into balls and when they get hard, dip into the chocolate and lay on brown paper to cool. Take half a cake of fresh baker's chocolate, grate it and put into a vessel or basin that will fit into the tea kettle. When the chocolate is dissolved by the steam, dip the balls into it as described above. This makes about fifty balls.
This is a plain boiled fondant, cooled and creamed by hand, then coated in melted chocolate. Nearly everything that can go wrong happens in the first ten minutes, so read the cooling note before you start.
- The hinge: do not disturb the syrup while it coolsOnce the syrup is poured out, leave it absolutely alone until it is barely warm to the touch, around 100-110F. Stirring or scraping a hot syrup seeds large crystals and gives grainy fondant instead of a smooth, opaque cream.
- "Cream tartar size of a large pea"Perhaps 1/8 teaspoon of cream of tartar for two cups of sugar, though a pea-sized lump is an elastic measure. Its job is to invert a little of the sugar so the fondant sets fine-grained; too much acid inverts too much sugar and the candy can stay soft, so err on the small side.
- Five minutes, or a thermometerBoiling time is a poor proxy for concentration, since it depends on your pan and burner. Cook to the soft-ball stage, 236-240F, which is what five minutes of hard boiling was meant to achieve.
- Why the basin is coveredThe lid traps steam that washes sugar crystals down from the sides of the pan. A lid for the first two or three minutes, or a wet pastry brush around the rim, does the same job.
- "Half a cake of fresh baker's chocolate"Baker's chocolate meant unsweetened chocolate sold in blocks, usually half a pound to the cake, so this is about 4 oz. It is bitter on its own; against a very sweet fondant centre that is the point, but many cooks now use semisweet couverture instead.
- Melting over the tea kettleThis is an improvised double boiler. A heatproof bowl over a pan of barely simmering water works the same way, and the water must not touch the bowl. Any drop of water or steam that falls into the chocolate will seize it into a stiff paste.
- Set and shineChocolate simply melted and cooled will set soft and streaky. Tempering it, or using compound coating, gives the snap and gloss that keeps the shells from smudging in the hand.
- Brown paperParchment or a silicone mat is the easiest modern substitute; waxed paper also works, though chocolate releases more cleanly from parchment.
- YieldAbout fifty balls, as stated, which puts the centres at roughly an inch. Store them in a tin, cool but not refrigerated; uncoated or thinly coated centres will stiffen as they lose moisture.
Fondant of this kind was the backbone of American home candy making from the 1880s onward, and cookbooks of the period devote whole chapters to it: one boiled sugar base, creamed by hand, then coloured, flavoured, tinted with nuts or fruit, and dipped. The technique arrived in domestic kitchens on the back of two things that had recently become cheap and reliable, granulated cane sugar of consistent quality and blocks of unsweetened chocolate sold by grocers. Cream of tartar, a byproduct of winemaking, was the standard household interfering agent before commercial glucose and corn syrup took over that role in candy recipes. The improvised double boiler set into the tea kettle is a good marker of the period's kitchen, where a kettle sat on the range most of the day and any basin that fit its mouth became a piece of equipment. Chocolate cream drops were also a staple of the commercial confectioner's shop, and recipes like this one were offered to housewives as a way to produce at home what would otherwise be bought by the quarter pound.