Marzipan in Scandinavian Baking
Almond is a classic flavor in Scandinavian baking, so learning how to make good homemade marcipan, or marzipan, is essential. We often use this marcipan on its own to make confectionery. You can also mix it with butter and more sugar to make a filling for various Danish pastries, including our favorite, Spandauer! You can even roll it out and use it to cover or fill certain cakes, such as the Swedish prinsesstårta (princess cake), or Norwegian hvit dame (white lady) cake.
Christmas Confectionery
In our family, one of our favorite parts about Christmas, or Jul, is when we get to make konfekt (confectionery)! It’s super easy – all you need is marcipan and food coloring. You can create whatever creatures or buildings or scenes that you want. Usually, we stick to making various animals, but one time we made an entire village, which was lots of fun (even if it did turn out pretty ugly lol).
Making Marcipan
The process to make marcipan is incredibly easy – it’s just a matter of combining your ingredients in a bowl or food processor! If you do not have egg white or would like to make the recipe vegan, you can use water. Just add until it comes together into a dough like ball. If you make our recipe, please comment, rate, and tag us on Instagram! We love to see you make our recipes!
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Marcipan (Almond Confection)
Ingredients
- 125 (1 1/4 cups) grams almond flour
- 125 (1 cup + 1 tbsp) grams powdered sugar
- 1.5-2 tbsp pasteurized egg whites OR water
- 1 tsp almond extract
Instructions
- Measure out your dry ingredients (almond flour and powdered sugar).
- Add dry ingredients to a food processor or a medium sized mixing bowl.
- Pulse a few times in the food processor or mix together in the bowl, just until roughly combined.
- Add in 1 tbsp egg white or water, and almond extract to the food processor or bowl.
- Pulse or run the food processor until all ingredients combine and begin to form a ball – you may have to add a little more egg white or water (up to 1 tbsp more) to get it to bind together. Add gradually so it doesn't get too wet! You can always add more almond flour and powdered sugar in equal parts if it does get too wet.
- If doing this by hand, you can knead it together in the bowl until it begins to form one large mass. Again, if it gets too sticky and wet, add more powdered sugar and almond flour in equal parts until the texture resembles play doh!
- You should be left with a malleable, dough-like ball that you can use for a variety of other recipes. We store our marzipan in the fridge for up to a week; you can also wrap it and freeze it for longer term storage, just place back in the fridge a day or two before you plan to use it!
Easy peasy! Took less than 5 minutes to make and it tastes exactly as is should!
Thank you for trying our recipe! So glad you liked it 🙂
Since childhood I have loved Marzipan. I have never given any thought to making it myself, that is until about 20 minutes ago ! Thank you so much for your very easy recipe. It turned out superior in flavor by comparison to the Marzipan I recently purchased on line.
Thank you for trying our recipe – so glad it turned out well!
We always made marzipan at Christmas. My dad was the expert. He used a very thick roux made of butter, flour and heavy cream. The chopped almonds were added and then progressively more and more icing sugar was added via the meat grinder method.
The result was very smooth and making other confections with it was quite easy. I’m looking for a recipe like my Dad’s.
Hi Lisbet! Wow that sounds like a super interesting and delicious marzipan! We’ve only ever made it with almond flour, almond extract, powdered sugar, and egg white/water and no cooking (unless we then add it to baked goods) but I am sure there is a recipe out there on the internet similar to your dad’s recipe. Thanks for commenting and best of luck finding a recipe!