Many times I remember when -as a child- I entered the kitchen and our mother was cooking with her blue apron
She was always trying old and new recipes. It was normal to have guests for dinner or after dinner and each time mom experimented a new dish but there was always something repeated because successful. One of these were the candied fruit delights. I loved to see them :appealing, a few on a dish and so elegant to serve as bright. I found the recipe in Mamma’s cookbooks and I made them for a party because for me they represented an elegant evening. And in fact we found something similar in a cooking magazine from the 60s, suggested as an elegant dish.
15 dried plums 15 dates 30 half walnuts
250 g Almond paste 500 g sugar 3 spoons of vinegar
1 glass of water 1 tablespoon and a half of cream of tartar
food coloring if you want
Make a longitudinal cut to the plums and dates on one side
Pit them without dividing the fruits in two parts.
Work the almond paste for 5/10 minutes with your hands on a marble table to make it soft.
Give the pasta the shape of a breadstick and fill the dates and plums one by one with small pieces of it. Use it for nuts.
You can use this fruit right away or you can also wait a few days before caramelizing them.
Insert a toothpick into each fruit.
Grease the marble table with a little oil. Put the sugar in a saucepan, add a glass of water, add the vinegar or.the cream of tartar. Heat it on a medium heat, making sure that the flame does not touch the sides of the saucepan
After about 12 minutes check the cooking by taking a drop of the liquid between two wet fingers
And then throw kind of it back into the water: it must form a small slab.
Remove the saucepan from the heat. Take one fruit at a time holding it by the toothpick and quickly dip it in the water and sugar, then place it on the marble.
Let the fruit dry for a couple of hours.
Remove the fruits from the table with a small knife and cut the possible burrs with scissors.
Keep cool until serving.
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