How to make marzipan?

[Headless Chicken]

Mother bought a bag of almonds at a factory outlet. I'm jotting down some almond creations and ideas but many will need marzipan. I don't want to buy any and I do believe in making everything from scratch when possible. Anyone have a good working recipe for marzipan that I can recreate at home?

I know its very finely ground almonds with a bit of powdered sugar, almond extract, and eggs. I need a ratio. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Jock]

I have a recipe at home. Give me a day and I'll look it up for you.

So what do you plan to do with it? My favorite thing is to wrap it around a fruit cake before applying the icing - or drape it over a Swedish Princess cake.

Jock

[Headless Chicken]

I had a number of ideas
Petit Fors
Almond cake with an almond butter cream, vanilla cake, and ganache icing.
Almond twisted coffee cake
Almond pastry cream filled eclairs

Problem is, I would need the almonds to be made into almond butter and/or marzipan. I havn't settle with a decision yet, family is a bit hard to impress and I don't want to be making the same items over and over again.

[Headless Chicken]

Chocolate & Almond cake

Adlmond butter cream + marzipan layers
Chocolate spounge + Ganache icing
Maybe a layer of japonaise (almond lady fingers)

Will try to make for this weekend when I head over to Detriot for friend's granduation party.

[Jock]

You know what? I did look that recipe up but then i had to go out and I forgot to reply. Sorry And, of course I am at work again so it will be tomorrow.

Jock

[Jock]

I used to have this recipe for marzipan that called for rataffia essence. Some friends here on CT deduced that rataffia essence was in fact a bitter almond essence. Kind of a pointless storey actually because I can't find that recipe any more.

Anyway, I looked around and found that most recipes for marzipan call for adding egg white and sugar to store bought almond paste. But that kind of defeats the purpose in your case. I did find a couple of recipes starting with raw nuts though; one that is very basic and one that is more involved. First the basic one:

Equal amounts of ground nuts and sugar mixed with enough egg white to make a paste. A few drops of rose water and a little almond essence are opional additions.

The more complete recipe is from the 1975 edition of Joy of Cooking. It starts with making the almond paste:

Pass 1 pound of blanced nuts through a meat grinder at least 4 times using the fine blade. (It is not only OK, but desirable for the nuts to be oily.)
Cook 2 cups of sugar and 1 cup of water to 240 degrees. Off the heat add the ground nuts, 6 to 8 TBS OJ and a few drops of rose water (optional.) Mix to combine and let it cool. Knead it till smooth.

For the marzipan:

For each cup of almond paste - whisk one egg white and mix in the cup of almond paste and 1 1/2 cups sugar.

Good luck

Jock

[Headless Chicken]

WOW thx, definatly useful.