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| Betty Crocker Marzipan Cookie Recipe |
Sir Chandler was turning 3 and had requested a "LarryBoy" cake... I'll leave the remaining dots for you to connect :)
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| Marzipan VeggieTales & Larry Boy Cake |
Marzipan candies call for Almond Paste, but Barren County, KY was barren of this ingredient...amongst many other things.
So we bought almonds and made a rustic paste of our own.
In a blender.
Hours of buzzing and blending and mulching and molding later... we had crafted several marzipan VeggieTales.
It was a LOT of work for little vegetables.
Sometimes, the experience of making an item is as much the reason for undertaking an endeavor as the anticipated joy of using or eating the item in question.
In this case, I decided the decorative nature of marzipan was its only redeeming value. I did not care for the taste. I was not a big fan of almonds in general- whole, crushed or as flavoring. And while it was an experience to be sure, it was not one I was eager to repeat.
I chose all future cake decorating projects to exclude a need for tiny marzipan anythings.
Join me now a decade later...
Sir Chandler is now 13, I have grown to love almonds in all forms... and almond paste is readily available in all the grocery stores I frequent.
I found this adapted recipe for marzipan cookies in my favorite Betty Crocker cookbook. I have known it was there for a long time... I cannot explain what compelled me to succumb to it yesterday.
I just did.
I think it all started with the 'fortune cookies' that we made earlier in the year... I only needed 1 Tbs of almond extract for those. I've been using up the remainder of the bottle ever since. As I was looking for something to make that only used a few ingredients, I noticed the recipe for these mini fruits did not require almond paste- only almond extract.
The dough recipe is pretty simple.
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| Marzipan Cookie Dough |
The shaping of the fruit requires a little patience.
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| Marzipan Cookie Fruits |
Because we had errands to run and baseball practice and because I didn't have colored sugar and spent even more time making a batch of each color, a great deal of time elapsed from the time I started making the cookies and the time I finished.
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| Making colored sugar turns out to be incredibly easy. |
It was with a wry grin that I switched the oven off in the wee hours of the morning... leaving the cookies in the oven to finish and cool til the arrival of a more decent hour.
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| "Good Morning, Cookies. I shall eat you with coffee after my nap." |
No matter how much some things change, other things never do :)
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| **The marzipan cookies spread a little during baking. A longer chill may have prevented this. |
MARZIPAN COOKIES
1 Cup Butter, softened
1/2 c Sugar
2.5 c All Purpose Flour
1 ts almond extract
Food Coloring
Cream butter & sugar
Add Flour & extract
Divide into 3 or 4 parts
Add food coloring
Form fruit shapes
Roll in colored sugar & paint with additional food coloring as desired
Chill
Bake @ 300 degrees for about 30 minutes~ until set but not browned.
*The book calls for cloves and cinnamon sticks for the stems and fruit accents- I used pecan slivers for lack of the prior
**Only after dividing the dough did I realize I had accidentally used half the amount of butter called for. To make up for it, I drizzled in coconut oil. This may account for more of the spreading in the oven.