From German and Italian, the word "marzipan" is translated as "March bread", and for good reason - products from marzipan mass in these countries are as familiar as bread is. But in Russia, for a long time, marzipan was called the filling for crushed nuts buns with sugar, which, of course, is an unfair misconception.
Pick your recipe
You will need
-
- almonds - 3 glasses;
- water - 1 cup;
- sugar - 2 glasses;
- icing sugar - 4 tbsp;
- food colorings;
- vegetable oil;
- a few drops of honey.
Instruction manual
1
Heat the water in a saucepan. Add sugar, stir until it is completely dissolved. Bring the syrup to a boil and let it boil for a couple of minutes. Remove the saucepan from the heat and beat the mixture until the syrup is cloudy.
2
Peel the almonds. To do this, put it in a bowl and pour boiling water. Leave on for 10 minutes. Then fill with cold water. Now the nuts will be cleaned easily. Dry them and grind in a coffee grinder. Add to sugar syrup, mix thoroughly, put on fire and cook for 2-3 minutes. Then put the mixture on a surface sprinkled with powdered sugar and knead the marzipan mass.
3
Divide the mass into several pieces. To color the marzipan in the desired color, make a small indentation in the piece, drip the dye there and knead it thoroughly. It is better to use natural dyes, for example, beet or berry juice.
4
From the marzipan mass, you blind any figures, like plasticine. Marzipan dries quite quickly, so wrap the mass that you don’t use, and if it does dry, moisten your hands with water. Glue small parts of figures to each other with a drop of honey.
5
You can use ready-made molds with which you make decorations for cakes. Lubricate such a mold with vegetable oil, take a piece of marzipan mass, fill it with a mold and carefully pack. Then turn the mold over and hit it sharply on the table - marzipan will separate from it.
6
Sprinkle the finished figures with powdered sugar. For storage, wrap them in parchment paper and put them in a box with a tight-fitting lid.
7
There is another way to color the figures. In a cup, mix a few tablespoons of a clear alcoholic beverage (such as grappa) and add dropwise liquid food coloring. Prepare some of these dyes according to the number of desired colors and paint the finished marzipan figures with a thin brush. After that, allow the figures to dry and top with sugar icing.
Useful advice
A mass rolled out into a thin layer can cover the cakes, using it as a mastic.