Remember the ballet of the Russian classic Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker? There is a cycle of numbers performed by residents of Confiturenburg - tea and coffee, chocolate and caramel, and also marzipan. You can buy marzipan sweets everywhere today, although initially they were just a Christmas treat.
What is marzipan?
Beautiful word mar-qi-pan. So thin, graceful, like a ballerina on pointe shoes. It means an amazing delicacy - grated almonds with sugar syrup. No one knows for sure when and who first came up with this yummy. According to one version, the origin of marzipan is not at all romantic, but even vice versa. In hungry times in European countries, where almond trees grow in abundance, instead of flour, nuts were used to cook at least some kind of food. They were ground into flour and knead the dough on cakes. Such a prosaic origin of marzipan did not make it something mundane. Over time, sweet balls of almonds with sugar and some other tasty and aromatic additives turned into a festive treat, which was usually prepared for Christmas.
Are all nut-filled sweets marzipan sweets?
Almonds have a delicate taste and aroma. But since almonds are nuts, you might think that other nuts can also be ground into flour, add sugar and get marzipan. No, no and NO! Marzipan is just an almond delicacy, it was so from the beginning, and it always will be. All other nuts, turned into small crumbs or flour and sweetened with sugar syrup, will never be marzipan! You can use peach or apricot kernels, but then you will get not marzipan, but persipan. All, a different composition of an elegant nut treats simply can not be in principle. Candy manufacturers go to all kinds of tricks to create products that will be in demand, and as a supposed marzipan filling, they offer all kinds of nut flour in their sweets, ranging from hazelnuts to peanuts. But such sweets are not sweets with marzipan.
Little tricks for amazing sweets
Candies with marzipan, whose names are different from different manufacturers, differ in aroma and taste. Those who love this dessert know this. Keeping the refined taste of almonds, sweets often have a complex flavor and aroma. This is due to the fact that each of the confectioners who invents marzipan tries to develop their own unique recipe by adding other natural ingredients such as spices and dyes, changing the proportional ratio of almond flour, sugar, additives. In addition, almond flour makes marzipan plastic, like mastic. From this mass, you can literally dazzle any figure. This opportunity, by the way, is actively used in creating festive marzipan desserts, although the traditional form of this sweet is cupcake. And if you add natural or permitted food colors to the mass, they will become just a fabulously beautiful candy treat. Marzipan, whose photo is in the article, can be different.
What are marzipan sweets?
Many confectionery factories use almonds and sugar in their sweet products. For example, the “Victory of Taste” candies with marzipan are available in assortment:
- chocolate truffles with bitter chocolate and dark cocoa;
- truffles "Mocha" with marzipan in dark chocolate and cream powder;
- Tiramisu truffles with dark chocolate marzipan and mascarpone cheese;
- Italian Truffles with marzipan and grated walnuts.
The Victory of Taste factory has been operating in Moscow for more than 10 years. The range of products - sweets and chocolates - is very diverse. Candies with marzipan from Victory of Taste can be purchased not only by weight, but also in gift wrapping. These sweets are invariably popular with sweet tooth, even despite their rather high cost.
Sweets and music
According to one legend, the great Mozart adored marzipan balls. Their pleasant taste and delicate aroma of almonds gave the genius composer pleasure. Although this is only a legend. But it is known for certain that a century after the death of the great Mozart, the Austrian confectioner Paul Fürst invented Mozart marzipan balls - mozartkugel. It was in 1890. Marzipan with the addition of pistachios was manually molded into a ball, on top of which was applied a layer of nougat - a sweet plasticine-like mass. Then such a delicious ball was planted on a thin wooden stick so that it could be completely dipped in chocolate. Mozart balls on sticks were left to harden the chocolate, and then the stick was removed. The remaining hole in the ball was filled with chocolate. When the marzipan candy was ready, it was also manually wrapped in the thinnest sheets of tin and lead alloy, painted in silver-blue color and with the profile of the great Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart painted in the center. To this day, “Mozartkugel” is one of the favorite treats for only Austrians, but also for all those who love marzipan. These sweets are made using machines and manually. Mozart sweets with marzipan are produced in many confectionery factories in Germany and Austria, since the recipe was not patented. But man-made mozartkugel can be bought at the Fürst confectionery shop in Salzburg - an Austrian town filled with Mozart's music and the aroma of marzipan.
Homemade marzipan
It just seems that marzipan is something very complex, distant. This sweet can be prepared at home, and it is available even to a novice cook. Sweet and bitter almonds, sugar and water are needed to make marzipan. In a glass of almonds, the nuts should be distributed as follows: for 10-15 sweet tonsils, take one or two bitter ones. Dip the raw almonds in boiling water for literally 1-2 minutes. Then cool the nuts a little and clean, peeling the skin. Dry the almonds in a pan, avoiding toasting. Then chop the nuts as finely as possible with a blender or mortar. Put the mass on fire by adding 1 tablespoon of granulated sugar and a third of a glass of water. You can drip a couple drops of almond essence to enhance the aroma. Dyes are also added if necessary. The mass over low heat, constantly stirring and rubbing, boil for 3-4 minutes. Then marzipan is laid out on a dish, covered with a napkin and cooled to room temperature. Now from this fragrant sweet mass you can dazzle any form of candy. Store marzipan wrapped in cling film in the refrigerator.