PASSIONATE RATIONS

The mention of marzipan, a very holiday-infused edible, seems to engender a certain displeasure in almost everyone I know.

For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why, but I think I’ve finally hit upon it.

It’s the pigs.

Marzipan is a shape-shifter.  It can be molded to resemble real fruit, or tiny, but otherwise life-like, animals.  Scary.

When somebody hit upon making a diminutive pig-shaped confection, it was all over for marzipan.  They looked too real, and people simply cannot get over it.  “Is it candy, or is it ham?” they ask themselves.  The psychic toll this thought process takes on our brain’s flavor centers is too traumatic.  Hence, the displeasure.

Perhaps this is why I, myself, prefer marzipan in unmolded form, such as when it performs its role as a filling (like in holiday Stollen—which I will get to in a moment), or rolled out like fondant (but with pleasing flavor and texture) to cover a cake.  In these forms, it is delightful.  Slightly sweet, soft-n-crunchy all at once.  And how can almonds, sugar and egg whites, maybe a little orange zest, be distasteful, really?

When I lived in Los Angeles, I routinely hired a gentleman pastry chef (Jean-Louis Kippelen) to make birthday cakes for myself and friends.  I liked to think of him as my own personal baker.  This was because he was French-Canadian (as am I), a cultural group very difficult to find in L.A., unlike, say, the Northeast.  He had a little shop on the west side.  You could just ring up or walk in and order your cake—any kind your heart desired.  He could figure out how to make every crazy thing.  For me, he concocted an orange-marmalade chocolate cake with a marzipan layer and a rolled-marzipan covering.  Happy Birthday, Jesus!  This was my conversion from marzipan skeptic to marzipan believer.

And, soon thereafter, I found Stollen.  You would think I might have discovered it earlier, it being from Germany and all, but no.  Stollen is a traditional sweet, fruit-filled bread.  The word is pronounced like the word you use for something taken by theft, which engendered much amusement and resulted, after a few drinks, in the invention of a punk band named “Stollen Baby” (Get it? Like your kid’s been kidnapped? Your kid made out of a sweet bready substance stuffed with marzipan?…. Guess you had to be there…).

A-a-a-nyway, it is as a complement to other things—like cake, or sweet breads, or chocolate—that marzipan truly shows its stuff.  Give it another try.  Trader Joe’s always sells it this time of year.  It will help make the season brighter.

Monday night’s advent-calendar treat:  Anthon Berg Apricot in Brandy—a Danish confection of apricot-brandy flavored marzipan, coated with chocolate.  Forget the marzipan pig- and fruit-shaped weird things and get me more of these!