I always wanted to make homemade marzipan, and without artificial products, directly with bitter almonds. Alternatively, you can also use bitter almond oil. Here you can find my recipe for it.
Please note: Bitter almonds contain prussic acid and are toxic when raw! Children are already endangered by a few bitter almonds, so please be careful that children can not eat reach them!
Bitter almonds can be bought in health food stores and in some pharmacies. The prussic acid is volatile and decomposes when heated. Therefore, the consumption of homemade marzipan (if baked) is safe. However, you should not consume the raw mass unbaked!
Alternatively, you can use a few drops of bitter almond oil. This no longer contains prussic acid and is therefore safe. On the German Wikipedia the facts about bitter almonds are well summarized.
I am currently in Mumbai for two years, so I prepared homemade marzipan there. What you can buy as bitter almonds here are not almonds. It’s something else. Unfortunately, I don’t know if you can use them the same way. I did not dare to experiment, so I had the bitter almonds put in my mom’s care package and sent to me ♥.
I made the marzipan for the great Bethmännchen from my hometown Frankfurt. You can find the recipe for homemade Frankfurt Bethmännchen here.
Recipe for homemade marzipan from scratch using bitter almonds
Ingredients
- 250 g almonds
- 10 g bitter almonds
- 250 g icing sugar
- 3 Tbsp rose water
Instructions
- First of all, a warning: Bitter almonds are poisonous when raw! Children are already endangered by a few bitter almonds, so please make sure that children cannot snack on them! If you have small children and are concerned, please use bitter almond oil.This raw mass is intended for further processing. Therefore, please bake it afterwards, so that it can be consumed safely. For example with the recipe for Bethmännchen (see link above in the text).
- First you have to scald the almonds with boiling water and let them stand for about 8 minutes.
- Then rinse the almonds with cold water and peel them.
- Please put the almonds in cold water directly after peeling, otherwise they will discolor.
- Now dry the kernels well and put them on a board for 4-5 hours to dry. Turn the kernels regularly.
- Now grind the almonds very finely.
- Sift the powdered sugar and mix it with the almond flour
- Knead the mixture for 15 minutes with a food processor until the dough is smooth and shiny. Meanwhile, add rose water drop by drop.
- I needed an additional tablespoon of water and it was only when kneading by hand that it really became smooth for me. But really only add a little liquid at a time.
- Let the marzipan rest overnight before further processing.
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