We love making spoon sweets in Greece and this goes back to us always having an abundance of delicious fruit and vegetables and the strong principle of hospitality. Even the poorest household would have a spoonful of some candied grapes, quince, fig, whole baby walnut, baby aubergine even with a cold glass of water.
We love using a leaf of lemon pelargonium to flavour our candied fruit and it goes beautifully with some especially like grape, quince or as in this case tomato. You can experiment and add other flavours. I have found that I like adding green or pink peppercorns at times for a bit of heat. You can always use spoon sweets with thick Greek yogurt for a quick dessert.
I love these baby tomatoes candied and their acidity goes beautifully with the white chocolate discs. I sprinkled some dried calendula too which was great but you can use other edible flowers if you want.
To make the chocolate discs, just melt some white chocolate over a bain marie when when melted, remove from the heat, add 1/3 of its weight (in small pieces or drops) to it, stir to melt and temper this way, empty into a piping bag, cut a 1 penny hole to the bag and pipe in 3cm diameter circles on baking paper or a silicone pad.
Ingredients (approx. 25 baby tomatoes)
- 250g baby plum tomatoes on the vine preferably
- 250g sugar
- ½ lemon, juice and peel
- ½ vanilla pod
- 1 lemon pelargonium leaf (amberoriza), optional
Method
With a sharp knife cut a cross on the skin of the tomatoes at both ends. Drop in boiling water for 30 seconds and refresh in iced water. When the tomatoes have cooled remove their skin and squeeze gently pressing towards their top to discard the seeds.
Place them in a bowl with cold water and drizzle with the lemon juice. This will help firm up their flesh. Leave them to soak for 2 hours. Remove from the water and drain well in a colander.
Cut the vanilla pod in half lengthwise to expose the seeds and add in a saucepan with the pelargonium leaf, sugar and 125ml water. Bring to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar and continue on a soft boil for 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes to the saucepan and the lemon peel and simmer for 5 more minutes. Take away from the heat and leave overnight. The following day, discard the vanilla pod, lemon peel and pelargonium leaf and bring the tomatoes back to a soft boil to thicken the syrup. This should not take more than 10 minutes and you can test as you would with jam by pouring a little of the syrup on a cold little plate and seeing if when you push it with your finger it wrinkles and does not flood back into the plate.
Transfer to a sterilized jar. When using for the chocolate petit fours, take each little tomato, squeeze the syrup from it, cut in three and place on the discs while they are still soft.