Creating Pucker

As I continued reading Notter's The Art of the Chocolatier last week, I came to a section on pâtes de fruits. These French confections are made of fruit paste through a process that is quite similar to making jam. They're typically tossed in sugar that makes them sparkle like jewels, but it's also possible to enrobe them in chocolate. How do they taste? What is their texture? Think really delicious gummy. 

When I did my chocolatier program several years ago, pâtes de fruits was one of the first things I made. Not because it was required, but because I had read about them and was curious to try something new. I made them with strawberries and rhubarb, and they were a hit among almost everyone who tried them. But there was one individual who remarked that they were just too sweet.

Now, I have a number of friends who would say that there's no such thing as "too sweet." And while they may be right, I would also suggest that he wasn't wrong. Pâtes de fruits are sweet. There's a great deal of sugar in the fruit paste itself, along with pectin. The rolling in sugar is a key element of the presentation. So how does one balance something that is sweet combined with sweet and dusted in sweet?

Enrobing them in dark chocolate is one answer. But despite making pâtes de fruits a few times since then, I've never attempted to dip them in chocolate. The soft centre would likely be challenging to dip and, I suspect, would stick to the dipping forks, so I'd either need to dip them by hand (literally) to be able to control the chocolate or I would have to apply a chablon first (more on that in another blog). 

The other answer? Citric acid. While I had always thought of this as an option if I wanted to make sour gummies, Notter points out that adding a little citric acid to the sugar used to finish pâtes de fruits will give them a very slight pucker, mimicking that of fresh fruit. And that should help to balance the sweet.

And so my shopping list grows! Food grade citric acid isn't the easiest to find and it's more expensive than you might expect. It's $8.99 for 100g on Amazon and at Bulk Barn it's $6.89 for 96g. Nevertheless, it's now my intention to make pâtes de fruits again and try both of these techniques to find the balance that the original recipes were missing. 

Stay tuned for the results!