Super Easy Marzipan.

For me Marzipan is a memory taste. My mother used to get Dark Chocolate Marzipan eggs from Clausen's bakery every Easter. On Easter morning, my sister and I would find them, as well as intensely rich peanut butter eggs and your standard foil wrapped milk chocolates, in our Easter baskets. We were always warned that we were to save the Marzipan for Granny. Granny loved Marzipan and would always get the first bite and it was not uncommon to come back and find that the second and following bites had mysteriously disappeared.

Since then, I have always associated Marzipan as a homey, happy taste that brings back so many amazing memories of my loving and surprisingly naughty grandmother. I find that Marzipan in stores is fairly expensive or painted oddly bright colors and disturbingly void of chocolate. The other day while trolling my favorite recipe sites I stumbled upon a recipe and decided to try it out. The original source is the Blue Ridge Baker, who seems to have consistently tasty offerings. Sorry the pictures are so terrible.

Chocolate Covered Marzipan

8 oz Slivered Almonds

1 1/2 cups Powdered or Confectioners Sugar

1 TBS Almond Extract

5 TBS Corn Syrup (my sister suggested honey...probably would be tasty...haven't tried it though.)

4 oz Chocolate melted (tempered if you want to be crazy)

1. Grind Almonds in a food processor until a very fine powder. Mine doesn't so that great of a job but I actually like having some small nut pieces in my Marzipan. It definitely does not effect the taste.

2. Add Sugar and Almond Extract. Blend until smooth. Add Corn Syrup and mix thoroughly. The mixture should bind together.

3. Knead the dough until nice and smooth. It can be SUPER sticky so you may need to powder your surface. I used more Powdered Sugar. Form a log, wrap in Saran wrap, and stick it in the freezer.

4. Melt chocolate. Like I said if you want to go crazy you can temper the chocolate which is a lot of temperature watching and time. Tempering the chocolate will create the nice hard chocolate shell you think of when you buy candy from a store. So if you want really authentic beautiful chocolates you really should temper the chocolate. Personally its just a step that is delaying me from putting it in my mouth. I'm impatient. But I also have to keep mine in the fridge after I make it to keep the chocolate hard. If you want to temper it here's a good link http://www.cookingforengineers.com/article/155/Tempering-Chocolate

5. Take dough out of the fridge and cut, roll, or form the Marzipan into whatever shape you would like, the simplest being nice little round balls. Dip your shapes into the chocolate and place on a piece of parchment to set. Like I said, I'm impatient so I throw it in the freezer! (: After about an hour take them out and eat them! Simple and Tasty!

Enjoy

~K