Happy Valentine's Day! Homemade Marzipan

Every small child eats PlayDoh. Don't deny it. Two-year-old you indulged in the blue or red. Mom and dad always said no, but you just couldn't resist the sticky, colorful goop. Why create a tree and dog sculpture when you could just eat it. Unfortunately, PlayDoh doesn't taste good. At all. In fact, it tastes awful. Downer. I discovered marzipan as an adult, and my inner two-year-old was ecstatic. It's colorful! You can build stuff with it! And it tastes AWESOME! My real life twenty six-year-old realized I could use my new-found edible PlayDoh to decorate things and make them all fancy and stuff. You know, because it's pretty.

The options with marzipan are basically limited by your imagination. And probably your almond supply, but really you can buy more. You can dye it any color you feel like and form it into any shape you can imagine. Traditionally, marzipan is used to make fake little fruits to decorate cakes. You can make little animals, flowers, hearts, stars, and anything else you can come up with. When working with it, it may get soft and too sticky. Just add more powdered sugar. You can also store it in the fridge for 3 months, or in the freezer for 6 months, just thaw before use.

Roses can be any color. Violets are always blue, though.

Valentine's Day is coming up, and I wanted to do something fun for my friends. I decided to make some chocolate cupcakes from scratch and decorate with marzipan roses. My marzipan recipe is adapted from about.com. The chocolate cupcake recipe I used is from The Sophisticated Gourmet and really is just as easy as a boxed recipe. You probably have everything you need in your pantry already! You can decorate whatever you want with the marzipan, but it really does seem to go well with chocolate.

What kind of shapes will you make? Let me know in the comments!

Valentine's Day treats for my very best friends!

Homemade Marzipan
1 1/2 cups raw, unsalted almonds
4 1/2 cups powdered sugar, divided
3 egg whites, lightly beaten, divided
Food dye

1) Blanching almonds
To blanch your almonds,  bring a small pot of water to boil. Add almonds and boil for exactly 1 min. Drain in a colander and rinse with cold water. Carefully squeeze almond to separate the skin from the nut.

2) Almond Paste
Using a large food processor, or working in batches in a smaller processor, grind blanched almonds with 1/2 cup powdered sugar until the almonds are finely ground. Be careful not to over-process, or you will have almond butter. Once the almonds are very finely ground, add an additional 1 cup of powdered sugar and process again to mix. Add one egg white and process. The mixture should start to form a thick paste. If it seems too sticky and unmanageable, add additional powdered sugar.

3) Marzipan
Transfer almond paste from food processor to a stand mixer. Add remaining 3 cups of powdered sugar to the almond paste and mix at a low speed until almond paste has a more fine, sandy texture. With the mixture on low, slowly add remaining two egg whites until mixture forms a ball. You may not need all of the egg whites. Dust a surface with powdered sugar and knead marzipan until a soft, pliable dough forms. Add additional powdered sugar if the dough seems too soft.


4) Marzipan roses
Divide marzipan into a large ball and a smaller ball. In the large ball, add 3 drops of red food coloring and knead until ball is uniformly pink. Add more food coloring if you would like more red roses, or less if you want pink roses. Add 3 drops of green food coloring to the small ball and knead until uniformly green. Tear a marble sized piece of red marzipan off and flatten to form an oval. Roll up oval to form center of the rose. Take pea sized pieces of red and flatten into smaller ovals and add around the outside as petals. Take a marble sized piece of green, flatten into an oval and shape into a leaf. Score slightly with a knife to make leaf veins. Stick to the bottom of the rose blossom. Use to decorate cupcakes or cakes.