July 30, 2012
Mignardise
pâte de fruit à la fraise
(strawberry gumdrops)
I have childhood memories of eating gumdrops, but I don’t remember what they tasted like. They were orange. They were cylindrical with a hemispherical top. They were encrusted with sugar crystals. I didn’t have them very often. Why do I try to remember those gumdrops now? Because sometime in the last decade, my interest was awakened. Not because of fond memories, but because they would occasionally appear on mignardise plates in the high-end restaurants I was visiting in France. And none of these were orange.
Now that I’m preparing my own mignardise plates, it’s time to learn how to make, and maybe enjoy, gumdrops, or as the French say pâte de fruit. So I started my research. It seemed that recipes from French sources generally were thickened with agar and those from North American sources with pectin. But none of the gumdrops I remember eating in France were thickened with agar. Agar produces an opaque, somewhat dull looking result that is subject to syneresis (weeping). Pectin produces a translucent result with intense coloring, and that type of pâte de fruit was closer to what I remembered eating.
From reading pectin-based recipes, it was clear that the project would be hit and miss. Most carried the warning, either explicitly or implicitly, to “Follow this recipe exactly, or it won’t work.” Of course, after giving the warning, the recipe would proceed to provide imprecise instructions increasing my chance of failure. Some talked about acidity or sugar concentration. Some said only use liquid pectin, and others said the same for powdered pectin. In the end, I just closed my eyes and selected the recipe that looked the most reasonable and used strawberries. Did I mention that it had to be based on strawberries? I wanted to use strawberries because they were the least expensive fruit, at least when purchased frozen, I could find.
The recipe I tried with was one by Elizabeth LaBau, “guide” of the candy section on about.com. It only had four ingredients, always a plus in my book, and none of the ingredients was corn syrup. I was lucky, the recipe mostly worked. In the end, my finished yield was only 20 percent as large as hers, but it was tasty, like a solid piece of strawberry jam.
Note: I used sanding sugar instead of granulated sugar for dusting the finished pieces, bringing my ingredient count to five.
450 g (1 lb)
frozen strawberries, thawed
1 T
lemon juice
400 g (2 c)
granulated sugar
2-1⁄2 T
liquid pectin
sanding sugar
1. Prepare an 8 by 11‑cm (3-1⁄8 by 4-1⁄3‑in) rectangular baking pan with a removable bottom by spraying it lightly with baking spray.
2. Puree the strawberries in a high-speed blender until very smooth. Strain into a heavy-bottomed saucepan, and add the lemon juice and a fourth of the sugar.
3. Place the saucepan over medium-high heat. When the puree reaches about 60 °C (140 °F), stir in the remaining sugar and the liquid pectin. Continue stirring enough to prevent the mixture from burning.
4. When the mixture nears a boil, reduce the heat to medium. Continue cooking until the mixture reaches about 107 °C (225 °F). Turn the heat to low and continue to cook the mixture for an additional 2 to 3 minutes.
5. Pour the hot mixture into the prepared pan, and set aside at room temperature until cool and firm.
6. Carefully remove the pâte de fruit from the baking pan, and wrap it tightly with plastic wrap. Refrigerate until needed.
7. To serve, cut the pâte into 2 by 8-cm (8⁄10 by 3-1⁄8-in) strips. Each strip is suitable for 4 servings. Roll a strip in sanding sugar until no more will stick. Press on the sugar that does stick so it won’t fall off. Trim the sugar from the ends, and cut the strip into 4 equal pieces. This can be done a couple of hours before serving and left on the serving plate at room temperature. The remaining, unsugared, pâte should be wrapped tightly in a fresh piece of plastic wrap and returned to the refrigerator.
Yield: 20 pieces.
See also pâte de fruit à la mangue.
© 2012 Peter Hertzmann. All rights reserved.