Marzipan figures are a typical Christmas sweet. Discover how to make them at home with this delicious homemade recipe. As exquisite as wonderful.
Who doesn’t like marzipan? It is a traditional and typical Christmas dessert, which is produced and consumed mainly in Spain. Although in some Spanish provinces, such as Toledo, it is very common that it is consumed all year round, where in fact it is extremely characteristic.
Moreover, in this part of Spain there is what is probably the first written reference related to marzipan, which dates back to 1577, although in 1786 the edition of the book Arte de repostería: En que se containing todo product stands out. To make dry and liquid sweets, biscuits, nougats, creams, frozen drinks of all kinds, rosolis, mistelas. With a brief instruction to know the fruits and serve them raw. And ten tables with their explanation, where in addition to marzipan other typical sweets are named, such as nougat.
Although the first documentation on its origin dates back precisely to the fifteenth century, there are some legends that could indicate that its origin is possibly Persian. Moreover, many historians agree that it is quite likely that it arrived in our country around the 8th century, after the Arab invasion. However, there are those who think that it also came from the hand of crusaders and pilgrims.
In any case, we are faced with a typical traditional Christmas sweet, which consists of a kind of dough or sweet of almonds and sugar, which are mixed in equal amounts and crushed until a texture that is as uniform as possible is obtained. To finish, the dough is painted with egg white and baked, acquiring that characteristic color.
Marzipan figures recipe
It will take you about 1 hour to prepare the figurines, and approximately 20 minutes to bake them.
Ingredients:
- 200 g of ground almonds
- 200 g of icing sugar
- 1 egg
How to make the marzipan figures:
- First, carefully separate the white from the egg yolk, and reserve it.
- If you have whole raw almonds, grind them with the help of an electric grinder. Then mix the ground almonds with the icing sugar and the egg white, little by little, until you obtain dough that is as homogeneous as possible.
- Put parchment paper on the baking tray.
- Separate into small portions. If you wish, form figures to make traditional marzipan. You can choose to cut pasta with shapes, or give them yourself the shapes you want.
- Place the marzipan figurines on top of the baking paper and when you have them all placed, brush the surface with the egg yolk.
- Put in the oven and bake at 200ºC. There is no baking time, the ideal is to observe the figurines and remove them from the oven when they have lightly browned.
- Lists! You already have your delicious Christmas figurines.
