For the marzipan fan
I SPENT hours last weekend trawling the shops for marzipan but to no avail. For the past few years, I have been able to buy marzipan on the run up to Christmas, either packs of imported-European or rolls of Turkish badem ezmesi, but no such luck this time. To be honest, I can’t stand marzipan; it’s a texture thing rather than flavour, for I love almonds as nuts. I’ve never liked marzipan — when I was little, my mother would bake a small Christmas cake that was iced without marzipan especially for me, while the rest of the family tucked in to the large traditional one — so left to my own devices, I would happily do without, but someone else in our house loves it, so there was nothing for it but to roll up my sleeves and make my own.
I have tried to make marzipan before. Living in a farming community in rural West Cumbria where everyone made everything from scratch, I would probably have been drummed out of the WI if I hadn’t at least tried, but the result was so spectacularly unsuccessful that I haven’t tried again since. However, needs must . . . And if you find yourself similarly marzipan-bereft, hopefully the following recipe will help.
I was unwilling to return to the recipe that did me no good back in the 1980s (yes, it was that long ago) but the nice people at Delicious. magazine came to my aid (albeit with a couple of adjustments to the flavouring). One of the mistakes I made the last time was to blanch and grind the almonds myself. I didn’t realise that this would result in ground almonds that were still “wet” with oil, which in turn made for a very oily paste that stuck to everything it came in contact with. To be on the safe side, this time I used ready-ground almonds (badem toz), which are “drier”. extract, almond extract, brandy and the lemon juice.
Make a well in the centre of the almond mix, then pour in the egg mix. Stir in the liquid, then use your hands to bring the mixture together. Transfer the marzipan to a work surface and knead until smooth. Wrap in cling film, then chill in the fridge until needed.
You need to dust the work surface with icing sugar before kneading the marzipan. Even so, you may find it keeps sticking to the worktop but persevere and eventually you should have a smooth(ish) ball that you can cover with cling film and set aside to rest in the fridge for at least a couple of hours.
The above quantities should give you enough marzipan to cover the top and sides of a 20cm cake, with some left over. If you don’t want to cover a cake, or your cake is smaller than 20cm, what are your options?
Well, a batch of marzipan opens up all sorts of food gift frontiers. You can sandwich walnut halves together with plain marzipan to make
Or you can stone plump dates and fill the cavity with marzipan, for
are rather more fiddly — pack hazelnuts into glacé cherries, then wrap each one in a coating of marzipan. If stuffing hazelnuts into glacé cherries sounds like too much work, chop up the cherries and roll them into some marzipan, then either roll the mixture into balls or cut out small petit foursshaped pieces. Put the sweets into individual paper cases and pack a selection of each into boxes for a gift that shows you care enough to make an effort.
Almond-rich marzipan has long had the reputation of being an “extravagant” gift because of its costly ingredients (almonds and sugar). It is generally believed that crusaders returning to Europe through Turkey introduced marzipan to Eastern Europe (the city of Edirne is particularly renowned for its badem ezmesi) and then spread west. Known to some as “marzapane” and to the Elizabethan English as “marchpane”, marzipan became a speciality of the Hanseatic League port cities, with Lübeck and Tallinn in particular having a proud tradition of marzipan manufacture. Indeed, Lübecker Marzipan was granted Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status by the EU in 1996.
At the Niederegger Marzipan factory in Lübeck you can see a life-sized display of statues made from marzipan and on a trip to Hungary a couple of years ago, we visited the Marzipan Museum in Tihany on the shores of Lake Balaton, where the gift shop is filled with every imaginable shape and colour of marzipan.
If you are feeling artistic, you can colour and mould your marzipan into luscious-looking fruits or even vegetables, such as cauliflowers or carrots. In Denmark, marzipan pigs (often coloured a lurid pink) are popular at this time of year. An easier option, but one that would be popular with marzipan lovers, would be these 450g marzipan 150g dark chocolate, melted Flaked almonds for decoration (optional) Chopped almonds, lightly toasted (optional)
Line a tray with baking parchment. Divide the marzipan into roughly tablespoon-sized pieces and roll each one into a ball; you should get about 20. Dip the balls one at a time into the chocolate, allowing any excess chocolate to drip off before arranging the balls on the lined tray so that they are not touching each other. Decorate some with flaked almonds if you like before setting the tray aside to allow the chocolate to set. Stored in a closed container in a cool, dry place, these truffles should keep for a couple of weeks (unless someone eats them all).
If you like sweets in a crunchy chocolate shell, mix a couple of tablespoons of toasted, chopped almonds into the melted chocolate before dipping the marzipan balls into it.