Saturday, August 25, 2007

Making Fondant and Invert Sugar

I made my first batch of fondant today; it's not something I would have ever contemplated making, but there is a tremendous lack of many items here I need for confectionery. The other two are invert sugar and gianduja, both of which I am also starting to produce on my own.

Following the recipe but adjusting for the difference in altitude, I lowered the cooking temperature substantially and poured out my syrup, this time crystal free, onto my granite slab. It took me several batches of crystallized brittles and toffees to finally figure out the problem with crystallization here was the sugar; most Ecuadorian sugar is not very highly refined and thus had problems staying in a liquid state. I finally found a brand that works, just by chance.

The syrup was hot and thin when I started agitating it with a spatula. Within ten minutes it had whitened up and thickened substantially, after fifteen minutes it took on the short, almost crumbly texture that indicated it was done. This was a fairly thick batch of fondant, and it took a lot of elbow grease to keep it moving.

I decided on making a second batch, but this time with the addition of some cream of tartar in hopes that I would create some invert sugar. I cooked it at least twenty minutes as recommended on several sites, then removed it from the heat when it was still in an early stage of cooking, so that my final product would be substantially thinner than the first batch I made. After agitating it on the slab over fifteen minutes, it was white, shiny, and still fairly fluid. I'll see how it looks tomorrow after it has matured overnight-but it did look, and taste, just like a batch of invert sugar I had previously.

Seems to me that all the invert sugar recipes I find out there-most of which are for brewing beer and thus for a highly caramelized, and thus hard, version-never mention stirring the syrup in order to create crystallization. If you don't initiate crystallization, you either end up with a simple syrup, a crystallized chunk of sugar, or something in between-none of which are just what I am looking for. I made this batch of fondant/invert sugar thin on purpose; so that I could agitate it substantially and get those tiny crystals that go unnoticed in good confections, and so that I could add it and integrate it easily into my recipes. We'll see how it works out, but for now, it seems like the right stuff and has just the right texture, color, and taste.

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