Make your own Marzipan

This is a cooked marzipan recipe that contains eggs, as British home baking marzipan recipes tend to. It yields over 900g which should be enough for wrapping two 20cm long Battenberg cakes, and certainly enough to cover a 20cm round fruitcake. Marzipan keeps quite well wrapped in plastic in the fridge for two weeks, and if you are drying it out on top of a christmas cake it will keep longer, 1-2 months.

See here for tips on how to get ready-made marzipan in Japan, links to alternative cooked/raw, eggs/no eggs, alternative nuts marzipan recipes and comparative taste testing excitement!

Ingredients

• 450g ground almonds (and possibly a little more)
• 200g icing sugar
• 200g caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 0.5 tsp almond extract
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp brandy

Method

1. Mix sugars together and add the eggs.
2. Set the bowl over a pan of gently simmering water ensuring the bottom of the bowl doesn't touch the water. Whisk the egg mixture continually until the temperature reaches at least 60°C and is maintained for over 3 and a half minutes. (This should take about 12 minutes in total.)
3. Remove the bowl from the heat and cool by standing the base in cold water or resting on a cool pack while whisking in the lemon juice, brandy and almond extract.
4. When the mixture is cool stir in the ground almonds and knead briefly to bring it together. Depending how big your eggs were you may need to add more ground almonds to make a firm mixture, however it will also firm up a little on chilling. Divide into required portion sizes, wrap in plastic and chill until needed.

Marzipan recipe adapted from:
http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/type-of-dish/party-food/accompaniment/almond-icing-marzipan.html