Marzipan Twist - 'Marzipanzopf'

After a fairly long break I am back and ready to do more baking. We spent an excellent couple of weeks hiking and climbing in the Bavarian/Austrian Alps, mostly in a region called the Allgäu and Tirol. This is one of my favourite holiday destinations, partially because it is connected with a lot of childhood memories and family holidays, but also because the hiking and mountaineering there is amazing. It is a bit touristy, but not too crowded and it is absolutely beautiful. Our base was a sweet little town called Oberstdorf and we also spent a few days in the more famous Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Now I am back in the somewhat less scenic East Midlands (bless!) and slowly getting used to staring at a computer screen again for the majority of my waking hours... From experience I know that in a couple of weeks (or even days) it will feel like I have never even been away, but for the time being a bit of comfort food is called for. My holiday inspired me to bake and cook some regional specialties, such as Apfelstrudel and Germknödel. But the first ‘welcome back’ recipe is a sweet bread filled with marzipan and nuts. The thought of having this for breakfast always helps me get up early in the morning. The recipe makes one large loaf, which also freezes well.

For the bread dough:

500 g plain flour

20 g fresh yeast (or one sachet dry)

250 ml milk

1 egg

60 g butter

For the filling:

200 g marzipan

200 g ground almonds

2 tablespoons amaretto

4 tablespoons crème fraiche

1 egg
1 tablespoon cocoa powder (for colour, optional)

To brush before baking:

1 egg yolk and 2 tablespoons of milk

Put the flour in a bowl. Dissolve the yeast in the lukewarm milk and pour on top of the flour. Leave for about 20 minutes. Now add the egg and the melted butter and knead until you have a smooth ball of dough (you can add a bit more flour if it is too sticky, but not too much!). Leave to rise in a bowl covered with a dish towel for about 30 minutes or until it has visibly increased in size. Stretch and fold the dough and leave to rise again.

 

In the meantime, make the filling. Mix all the ingredients well (I put everything in a food processor and whizzed it until I had a sticky paste). Put aside until the dough is ready.

Roll out the dough to a square about 40 x 40 cm and then cut it in half. Add half of the filling each in a strip down the middle of both rectangles and then fold over the dough from both sides to get two long sausage shapes. Twist the two sausage shapes around each other and put on a baking tray covered in baking paper. Leave to rise while you preheat the oven to about 200 degrees. When the oven is hot brush the bread with the egg and milk mixture and bake for about 40 minutes.  

Marzipan and coconut macaroons - 'Kokosmakronen'

I have eaten these macaroons every year around Christmas time for more than three decades. This is my mother’s favourite recipe and, although I am particularly partial to biscuits made with buttery pastry, I have to admit that these are pretty special. The recipe does not contain flour or butter so their consistency is different from a lot of the other biscuits I have baked. The main ingredients are marzipan and coconut and the macaroons are dried in the oven rather than baked. As a result, they are juicy and chewy - decorated with good dark chocolate they taste amazing. 

They are relatively quick to make and they keep fresh in a tin for several weeks. This year I made the macaroons for the first time with marzipan I bought in the UK and not with original raw marzipan paste (Marzipanrohmasse) imported from Germany. Raw marzipan paste is excellent for using in cake batters and cookies, as it contains less sugar and is softer. If marzipan paste is used for cake decoration it needs to be mixed first with additional icing sugar to make it rollable. Luckily, the result I got with the British ‘ready-to roll’ marzipan is absolutely fine. I cut down the amount of sugar used in the original recipe and I cannot tell a difference in terms of consistency or flavour. The recipe makes about 70 macaroons, depending on their size.

5 egg whites

200 g unsweetened desiccated coconut

200 g icing sugar

400 g marzipan

1 tablespoon rum

Some granulated sugar for sprinkling and dark chocolate to decorate

Spread the desiccated coconut on a baking sheet and dry in the oven at a very low heat (100 degrees) for about 20 minutes. Leave the oven door open a gap and make sure the coconut does not change its colour. Remove from the oven and cool.

Whisk the egg whites until stiff. Add 100 g grams of the icing sugar and continue mixing (an electric whisk works best). Then add the marzipan torn into small pieces and keep whisking. Add the rest of the sugar, the rum and the coconut. Whisk until everything is well combined. I usually leave the batter to sit for about 20 minutes or so. If the batter is too runny after this resting period I add a bit more coconut.

Cover a few baking sheets with baking paper. Place walnut-sized lumps of batter on the baking sheet. I use a piping bag as this is the fastest way of doing it. But you can also use a wet spoon to do this and then shape the lumps with wet fingers. Sprinkle the macaroons with a small amount of granulated sugar and bake in the oven at 150 degrees for about 15 minutes. The macaroons' ‘feet’ and their tips should turn a light golden colour. Leave to cool and decorate with melted chocolate. 

Little Bethmanns marzipan bites – ‘Bethmännchen’

Researching and translating my recipes for this blog I keep coming across some interesting facts. For example, I found that German bakers are considerably more daring when it comes to ingredients than their English counterparts. I first realised this when I was unable to purchase food-grade caustic soda for my Pretzels, because the English use this for drain cleaning only. Now I found out that bitter almonds, a basic ingredient in almond paste and marzipan, are actually illegal in the United States (and, judging by extensive googling, they are unavailable in the UK as well). And why? Just because they contain hydrogen cyanide. This is a shame, because at the end of the day there won't be homemade marzipan without bitter almonds (I also think that a bit of cyanide makes Christmas just that bit more exciting). 

Maybe it is just as well that I could not get my hands on bitter almonds this week and I had to resort to shop-bought marzipan. When I was about 13 or 14, I baked Bethmännchen from scratch. This involved the blanching and peeling of a whole pound of almonds (in addition to two bitter almonds, which I managed to process without poisoning myself). It took me almost an entire day to peel the nuts, make the almond paste and to shape, decorate and bake the biscuits. When I got up the next morning my dad had eaten every single one of them. Rather than taking this as a compliment I was not pleased and never baked them again. This is, until now, when I decided to give the recipe another go with readymade marzipan. This version certainly is a lot quicker. If the fast Bethmanns taste different or worse than the original recipe I couldn’t tell. I never even got to try a single on that fateful day about 20 years ago.

This recipe is for about 40 little Bethmanns. Legend has it that these biscuits were invented by a French pastry chef, who worked for a rich German bankers’ family in Frankfurt – the Bethmanns – at the beginning of the 19^th century. Initially, four almonds symbolised the family’s four sons. When one of them died only three almonds were used for decoration from then on.

400 g good quality marzipan

120 g ground, blanched almonds

150 g icing sugar

1 egg white

About 100 g blanched almonds, cut in half, to decorate

Mix all the ingredients bar the halved almonds in a food processor or by hand. Roll into a sausage about 2 cm thick and cut off pieces the size of a cherry. Decorate with three half almonds and bake at about 150 degrees for 15-20 minutes. These burn easily and they should turn only slightly golden, so keep an eye on them!

Stollen bites with marzipan - 'Stollenkonfekt'

Yes, this is a Christmas recipe and no, it is not even the middle of November yet. However, these Stollen bites are not as premature as it might seem. Traditional Stollen needs to mature for 2-3 weeks until it has fully developed its flavour. Whilst these Stollen bites are not exactly traditional they also benefit from being hidden away in a tin for a few weeks. I baked them now so they will be ready to eat at the beginning of December. This is not a recipe for purists. Real Stollen is baked in large loaf shapes and not in gimmicky bite sizes. Moreover, marzipan or even double marzipan is not really a building block of the traditional German Christmas Stollen. Having said this, I prefer these bites to some of the more traditional renditions of the Stollen (which can be a bit dry sometimes). The bites are juicy and full of flavour and their small size means that they won’t spoil anybody’s appetite for all the other Christmas biscuits and cookies usually on offer. This recipe makes about 70 Stollen bites.

For the fruit mixture:

200 g raisins

80 g blanched almonds

Shot glass full of dark rum

50 g mixed peel

Mix the raisins and almonds with the rum. Leave to soak overnight or at least for 6 hours. Strain off any rum that has not been absorbed. Add the mixed peel and chop everything roughly in a food processor or with a knife.

For the dough:

500 g plain flour

50 g sugar

½ tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

A large pinch each of ground cloves and nutmeg

20 g fresh yeast (or one sachet dry)

130 ml warm milk

Mix the flour with the sugar, salt and spices. Dissolve the yeast in the warm milk and pour on top of the flour. Leave to stand for about 20 minutes or until the yeast has been activated.

For the marzipan mixture:

50 g marzipan

1-2 tbsp amaretto

200 g butter at room temperature

100 g icing sugar

Cut the marzipan into small pieces, add the amaretto and use an electric whisk to blend into a smooth paste. Add the butter and icing sugar and whisk until creamy.

Combine all three components (flour, fruit and marzipan mixtures) and knead for several minutes. The dough is fairly soft and sticky, some extra flour can be added if it is impossible to handle, but don’t add too much. Leave to rest and rise in a warm place for about 2 hours (it will not rise as much as bread dough).

For the marzipan filling (optional, but recommended):

150 g marzipan

Turn the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and roll into a sausage about 2-3 cm thick. Flatten into a rectangular strip of dough. Top this strip with small pieces of marzipan in intervals  of about 2-3 cm (see photo above). Fold one side of the dough over the marzipan pieces. Cut into chunks containing one ball of marzipan each.

Place on a baking sheet covered in baking paper and leave to rest for another 10 minutes or so. Bake for 15-20 minutes at about 190 degrees.

To finish:

200 g butter melted
1 pack of icing sugar

Dunk the baked Stollen bites into the melted butter as they come out of the oven (they have to be hot or at least warm).  Roll the bites in the icing sugar until they have a thick sugar covering. Leave to cool, store in tins (or in a few layers of aluminium foil) and hide. They will taste best if matured for 2-3 weeks.