Happy St Valentine's Day! Want a cute but simple treat for your valentine? Or something sweet to nibble on after dinner? Well here are some super cute strawberry creme hearts!
I remember making peppermint cremes as a kid and never having much success: the traditional recipe is a pound of sugar with an egg white and maybe a little golden syrup and Bob's your uncle, a soft malleable fondant that can be shaped into whatever you like (usually little balls pressed on with a fork). However, it never turned out so simply. The fondant was either too sticky, or too dry, and had no dimension to it other than unrelenting sweetness.
For me, the missing ingredient was always a little bit of fat to keep everything held together and to break up the sugariness. Also the vagueness of "one egg white" meant you could only make loads of it or none at all.
I've developed a simple recipe that uses only three base ingredients: icing sugar, vegetable shortening, and syrup. Not a single egg white in sight! I use glucose syrup, but white corn syrup is a perfect substitute.
INGREDIMENTS
1 tablespoon (15 grammes) white vegetable shortening
1 ounce (30 grammes) glucose syrup, or white corn syrup
4 ounces (115 grammes) sifted icing sugar
A few drops of cold water, for mixing
Salt for seasoning
Strawberry essence, to taste
Pink food colouring
Cornflour, for dusting
METHOD
- In a mixing bowl, mix the vegetable shortening and glucose syrup until creamy.
- Stir in the icing sugar, then add in water drop by drop until you have a nice dough. It should be stiff, but not dry.
- Knead in your flavour essences, colouring, and salt until it tastes and looks exactly how you like. You'll be surprised by how much salt you need to season it.
- Dusting your work surface with a little cornflour, you can either roll out and cut shapes like I did, or you could model it like clay.
- Allow the sweets to set for at least 2 hours, ideally 8 hours.
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