Marzipan Fruit & Vegetables

Admittedly, with 3 cups of sugar, marzipan fruit is not the healthiest dessert recipe of all time. But, you know, it’s marzipan’s got just as many nuts in it. Nuts are high in calories and high in fat, yes, but they’re also high in fiber, high in nutrition, high in heart-healthy fats. Most Americans don’t eat nearly enough nuts, so this recipe is a fantastic way to get lots of nuts into your diet while eating candy.

What is marzipan?

I love marzipan. It’s gotta be one of my Top 5 Favorite Candy things of all time. I’ve spoken to many people who’ve never heard of it, so I’ll give you a quick introduction. Marzipan is a candy made of sugar, ground almonds, egg whites (or corn syrup) and almond extract. It’s super sweet and intensely almond-flavored, and it’s especially popular at Christmas.

Marzipan also makes a great modeling dough for sculping decorations. In Germany, people eat adorable marzipan pigs for good luck in the New Year, and marzipan fruits are popular across many European cultures. It’s much more delicious than fondant.

Making your own marzipan is super-simple

Because marzipan contains so many almonds, it’s often expensive to buy pre-made in the supermarket. Yeah, you can find pre-made marzipan in the baking aisles of most supermarkets, but it’s incredibly easy to make your own with some almond flour, sugar, and almond extract.

You don’t even really need a food processor for this; you could just use a spoon to stir all the ingredients into a dough. You could roll the dough into balls and dip them in chocolate, or you could stuff the dough inside cookies or fruitcakes.

Since we don’t actually want to catch salmonella, it’s important to use pasteurized liquid egg whites for this. Alternatively, if you want to make this vegan (or if raw egg whites skeeve you out), ¼ cup of light corn syrup will work well as a substitute for the ¼ cup of egg white. The egg white is only here to act as a binder, holding the almond flour and sugar together.

How to model marzipan fruit and vegetables

I’ll level with you — I’ve got significant experience with sculpture and working with clay, like years of practice. Don’t be frustrated if it doesn’t come so easy for you, but here’s a short tutorial on how I did it:

1. Color the marzipan dough with food coloring

I wanted to get a few basic foundation colors to work with, so I divided the marzipan into a few balls and worked a few drops of food coloring into them. Gel food coloring creates more intense colors than liquid food coloring does.

2. Roll the marzipan dough into balls and shape them

This recipe makes 4 dozen little fruits, so roll the dough into 48 little balls. From there, you can model the marzipan into shapes. Pinching one end of the dough ball will make a pear shape, and pinching the dough in the middle will make a butternut-squash shape.

For the pumpkin shapes, I relied a lot on these cake decorating tools — particularly the one that looks like a little dentist’s pick, was especially helpful in forming those lines on a pumpkin’s surface.

If the marzipan gets too sticky, use a mix of 50/50 cornstarch and confectioner’s sugar to prevent sticking.

3. Color the marzipan fruit shapes with food coloring “paint”

Again, gel food coloring is a lot more intense than liquid food coloring. I made “paint” by squirting out a glob of food coloring and diluting it with a tiny bit of water. I also kept a bowl of clean water and some napkins handy so I could clean my brush and avoid color cross-contamination.

Then, I took a clean paint brush and went to town. I looked at photos of real gourds and pumpkins to help me with painting the marzipan shapes “realistically.”

I had to give them each a few coats, glazing them lightly in different colors each time to get that “realistic look.”

To make the little stems, I used whole cloves. You can usually find these in your supermarket’s spice aisle (check WalMart, Ocean State Job Lot, or the “ethnic foods aisle” in the supermarket to find cheap whole cloves.)

In all, it took me 3 hours to do this. I think it was worth it, because they turned out totally adorable and I was proud of myself. You probably don’t want to spend 3 hours modeling and painting tiny marzipan pumpkins, but I figured I’d explain what I did.