The big Easter marzipan test

Leve: Easy
Totall Time: 3h 10min

The Covid constraints make it yet again impossible to travel to Norway for Easter. It has now been almost 1,5 years since we last visited my family and friends which really feels like ages. In addition to missing the people, I also miss being able to stock up on some local ingredients and sweets. The Norwegian Easter marzipan is one of the items I crave for so I decided to make my own this year. But what mixture of sugar and almonds works best? I decided to run a marzipan test in order to find my favorite recipe:-)

The headline for this post is actually not exactly correct. What I am in reality testing is almond paste. While marzipan has a low level of almonds (30%) and is majorly sugar, almond paste has a minimum of 50% almond. But marzipan is the name that is more commonly used. All the recipes below have a minimum of 50% almond. What you find in the shops tends to only have 30% almond, since sugar cost less than almonds…;-)

The options I tested:

1. Ready-made almond powder, 50% almond level
2. Ready-made almond powder, 60% almond level
3. Home-made almond powder, 50% almond level
4. Home-made almond powder, 60% almond level
5. Home-made almond powder, 50% almond level, and added Rhum

To get the home-made almond powder (option 3,4 and 5) I added the almonds into boiling water and removed them from the heat. After 2 minutes I rinsed them in cold water and removed the skin easily. The almonds were then dried in the oven at 50°C (122°F) for 2 hours. I used a hand mixer to ground the almonds. In all the options the almond powder was roasted in the oven at 150°C (302°F) for 10 min in order to get a stronger almond flavor. I also added 4 drops of almond essence in all the recipes and I covered the end result with chocolate.

TEST CONCLUSIONS FOR EASTER MARZIPAN:

1: Home-made almond powder provides more taste and better texture than ready-made, but it needs to be very finely ground in order to get a workable texture.

2: The higher % of almond, the better the taste, but also the more difficult the marzipan became to work with. It cracked up a bit more when I rolled it out.

3: Definite winner was option 5. It was a good compromise that provided an excellent taste of almonds while not making the marzipan too difficult to work with. And the subtle Rhum taste brought the marzipan to a completely different level! You can of course skip the Rhum if you prefer or replace it with your own favorite (Cognac, Cherry…)

Let’s get started

Ingredients

The marzipan (50% almonds)

• 200 g (7 oz) Almonds
• 160 g (5,6 oz) Icing sugar
• 40 g (1,4 oz) Egg white approx 1 egg white
• 4 drops Almond essence
• 2 tsp Rhum Optional

(If you want to make 60% almond level: 240g (8,4oz) almonds / 120g (4,2oz) icing sugar)

The chocolate

• 200 g (7 oz) 60-70% Dark chocolate

How to do it?

The marzipan (50% almonds)

Bring water to boil and add the almonds. Stop the leat and leave them for 2 minutes. Rinse in cold water and remove the skin from the almonds

Spread the almonds on a baking tray and leave to dry in the oven at 50°c (122°F) for 2 hours.

Let the almonds cool down.

You can use an almond grinding machine if you have one. I used a hand blender and it worked fine. Mix with short pulsions so that you create a powder and not a paste…

Spread out on a baking tray and roast in the oven at 150°C (302°F) for 10 minutes. Let it cool down.

Mix the ground almonds together with the other ingredients using a kitchen machine or by hand. At first, it will look a bit dry, but shortly it will form a marzipan texture.

Cover with plastic foil and store in the fridge. I like to let the marzipan rest overnight to let it settle, but that is fully optional.

The chocolate

For the simple version: melt the chocolate and dip your wanted marzipan shapes. Let them cool down

For the best version with tempered chocolate:

Put the chocolate in a bowl into hot (but not boiling!) water in a saucepan.

Stir regularly and bring the chocolate to a temperature of 50-55°C (122-131°F). You need to use a cooking thermometer and carefully watch the temperature.

Remove the bowl from the saucepan and place it in cold water until the temperature of the chocolate is down to 35°c. Then place it at room temperature until it reaches 26-27°C (79-80°F). Stir regularly.

Put the bowl back into hot water and stir until the temperature of the chocolate reaches 31-32°C (88-89°F).

Remove the bowl from the hot water and dip the Easter marzipan shapes in the chocolate before leaving them to cool down on baking paper.