Marzipan, Ja!

One of the bonuses of being the granddaughter of an Austrian immigrant is marzipan. Raise your hand if you know what marzipan is. Good, class. I see some of you have been doing your homework (i.e. eating delicious European-style pastries). You get a gold star on your head for today. As for the rest of you, let me explain. Marzipan is a delicious paste made out of sweetened crushed almonds. It's too bad that it's called a paste because "paste" just doesn't sound that yummy, no matter what it is made of. But I promise you that marzipan is good.

As a child, my mother (the daughter of the aforementioned Austrian immigrant) used to give us marzipan and teach us how to shape things with it. She learned it from her mother. And her mother learned it like every normal Austrian child--about the time she was learning to sit up. Like deliciously edible play dough, marzipan can be rolled in your hands and molded into teeny tiny fruits, flowers, and animals, and then painted with food coloring to look nearly real. It was one of my favorite activities as a child to make miniature fruit bowls with carefully colored bananas, oranges, apples, and pears. And then to eat them in all their nutty glory. (See, Mom? There were some good parenting moments in there!)

You can also find marzipan used as frosting or filling for cakes. Because of its ability to be molded and shaped, it can drape over a cake like fondant that actually tastes good. It can make frosting flowers that aren't 90% shortening (but don't think I'm bagging on shortening flowers--they're my favorite part of wedding cake), and they make a really good filling in multi-layer tortes.

There are the bizarre uses for marzipan, such as this:

ALL made of Marzipan.

And if you're into a low-effort, low creep-factor version of marzipan, Ritter-Sport, my favorite European candy bar maker, has a Marzipan chocolate bar. And they now sell it at Target! Life is gut.