Marzipan
Some are very happy to tell you they hate it, others just loooove it. I’m definitely the latter! Here’s how you can make marzipan from scratch - you’ll laugh at how easy it is!
Much more almond!
My new favourite activity is to carry my baby boy around with me in a sling and show him the ingredients lists on the back of products in the shop. The poor guy can’t escape, so he has to listen to my boring ramblings about how “they don’t need a hundred ingredients in this! We make it with three at home!” and “how many percent nut?!”.
I get that if you need lots of marzipan for a cake or you want to involve your kids in making some marzipan fruit at Christmas - it’s quick and easy to buy some ready made. And it’s totally fine! But I just want to share with you how insanely easy it is to make from scratch, and you get the benefits of feeling super proud to have made it yourself, and you get a much more nut-rich version than the ones in the shop. You can also choose your desired added flavour!
Marzipan
180g almonds (skin on or blanched)
140g icing sugar (same as frosting/powdered sugar)
A splash of cold water
Optional: a dash of almond extract for extra intense flavour, or you can use rose essence, orange essence or other for different flavours!
Other options: a bit of cocoa powder for dusting, food colouring for making marzipan fruit or other figurines
Equipment needed:
A clean tea towel
A food processor or powerful blender
As I said, you will laugh at how easy this is. If you have skin-off (blanched) almonds, you can skip this first step. But for regular, skin-on almonds, put them in a bowl that you can cover, pour boiling hot water over them and cover immediately. Let them soak for 2 minutes, and then soak immediately in ice cold water. You want to shock their skin off! Now it should be relatively easy to get the skins off, put them on a clean tea towel and fold the towel over and start rubbing. The skin should come off most of the nuts, some may need a bit more thorough peeling.
When all the skin is off, put the blanched almonds in a food processor and blitz them until they become almond flour, which shouldn’t take very long. Then add in your icing sugar and blitz again. While it’s running, add the tiniest bit of cold water, and you should see it come together as a paste quite quickly. Do stop to check the consistency, because it may look to dry, but actually be nice and sticky when you touch it (so don’t just keep pouring on more water!).
You can add in almond extract or a different flavour essence for the last bit of blitzing in the food processor, but this is totally up to you.
Once the marzipan is made, you can eat it straight away! Make whatever shapes you like, I’m not much of a decorative desserts-type of person so I just roll them into balls and dust with a bit of cocoa, but you may be a bit more patient and creative than me!
I’d love to see your marzipan and how it turned out, please do share it with me if you are happy with the result!
Share on Instagram and tag @TheFromScratchBody and hashtag #TheFromScratchBody so I don’t miss it!
