Blanching and skinning almonds to make homemade marzipan does not have to be a hassle. Place the almonds in a saucepan with boiling water and boil them for about 1 minute before transferring them to a bowl filled with ice-cold water. When the almonds have cooled enough to handle, remove them from the water and pop the skin right off.
Making your own marzipan to use for cakes, confections, or as a sweet treat is easy with our recipe. Continue reading to learn more about homemade marzipan so you can start making this delicious sweet and sticky confection.
Water
|
100 ml |
---|---|
Sugar or cane sugar (approx. 1 dl)
|
85 g |
Cooled, peeled almonds
|
200 g |
The well-known almond confection known as marzipan is loved and enjoyed by many – especially around the holidays – for its sweet flavour and delicious stickiness. And if you love the store-bought version, the homemade kind will make you fall head over heels.
It is a delightful, sweet treat that may be enjoyed as it is or used to decorate cakes, fill pastries, or prepare delicious confections with nougat, chocolate, praline, nuts, candied fruit, and so on.
Our homemade marzipan recipe yields a delicious confection that differs from the kind you can buy at the store. The natural flavours of the almonds are more pronounced, meaning you get marzipan with plenty of sweet, nutty, and earthy flavours. Homemade marzipan is also moister and butterier in texture than most of the marzipan you can buy. As such, making your own from scratch is well worth the time.
Homemade marzipan has many uses. Like marshmallow fondant, it may be used to make cake decorations and cover cakes by rolling it out and draping it over the surface of the cake to turn even a simple cake into a work of art.
Marzipan may also be used as a sweet filling in cakes, pies, and pastries like croissants. For use in tarts, see our recipe for plum tart with sour plums and sweet marzipan. You can, of course, also use the nutty, homemade marzipan to make confections like truffles or rocky road.
It is fun and easy to experiment with homemade marzipan recipes by adding different flavours and colours. When flavouring your homemade marzipan, the sky is the limit as its natural almond flavour pairs well with a range of different flavours.
As such, one option is to take your marzipan in a floral direction by experimenting with adding liquids such as rose water, orange blossom water, and vanilla extract to your sugar syrup. Another option is to make a more adult twist to the homemade confection by flavouring it with an alcoholic beverage like sherry, rum, or amaretto.
While you may of course use food colouring to give the sweet almond paste different vibrant colours, you can also use flavourful ingredients with colouring properties.
You could, for instance, make an elegant and dark cocoa marzipan by adding cocoa powder, a fun, green one by replacing 1⁄3 of the almonds with pistachios, or a romantic, pink marzipan by adding ground freeze-dried raspberries. Doing so will give you either a rich and indulgent chocolate marzipan, a nutty sweet pistachio marzipan, or a sweet and fruity raspberry marzipan.