Marzipan is a sweetened almond paste. It is very delicious.

Marzipan is now considered something like candy, but historically it was invented as a way to make almonds keep longer since sugar acts as a preservative. Marzipan is a great traveling food in the past since it has high protein and vitamins in the almonds, and energy in the sugar. Marzipan has a good energy to it and just a small amount can refresh you.

Most Americans have never had marzipan, even those who think they have. Occasionally a cake shop will make a cake with a marzipan topping, or a croissant stuffed with marzipan, but this too sugery stuff is not real marzipan any more than the drink that comes out of the machine at the gas station is real cappuccino.

When I was young, one of my mother's German business associates gave her a round pie shaped box with a half kilo piece of marzipan upon which was impressed a three dimensional bas relief of the German town where the client's business was based. This was the first time I had marzipan and it was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted. I ate it slowly, only a pinch a month or even less frequently. It was so delicious that a single pinch could be savored for an hour. I managed to make that pie of solid marzipan last about 5 or 10 years.

Mom mentioned to another German friend that I liked Marzipan and he began a tradition of buying me a bar each year when he was in Germany. These semicylindrical bars were covered in thick semidark chocolate. Some had raisins in them. They also had rum. I felt the chocolate and raisins detracted from the marzipan and would remove the chocolate and eat it separately. The addition of the rum was not objectionable — I think marzipan can be plain or with rum. But covering it with chocolate is a bit too much.

I would make each of these bars last a year. I started looking for domestic marzipan but could not find any of adequate quality. The closest was that See's Candy shops had a marzipan covered with chocolate that was fairly good, but it did come covered with chocolate, which was an impediment to full enjoyment. You could select your own pound of chocolate there, so I would get these and candied ginger in a box every few years, it was an expensive treat.

Where I live now there is no real marzipan available at all, and even the cake shop style marzipan isn't easy to find.

It occurred to me the other day that it had been over a decade since I last had marzipan, which is one of my favorite things of all time.

I read up on marzipan, got some almonds, and did some experiments. And now I am able to make real marzipan that is exactly the same as the best german marzipan. Perhaps you'd like to try as well.

The key is that you'll use an egg white to bind the almonds and sugar together. One egg white will correctly do about 6-8 ounces of almonds and an equal amount of powdered sugar. If you try to use less than 6 ounces of almonds, you'll end up with a sticky paste and not the firm solid malleable substance you really want.

Note that you will be using raw egg whites and there is no cooking involved, so if you don't have a safe source of raw eggs free from salmonella, you should probably just skip this whole project. There are other ways to bind the almonds and sugar together, but I think you should do it right or not at all, otherwise just get the fake stuff at the cake shop or candy store.

I bought a 12 ounce tray of unsalted almonds. I used half of them. I put them in the blender in two batches and blended them down as fine as I could go. The powder got stuck on the sides of the blender, so I kept stopping it, pushing the powder down off the sides with a chopstick, then putting the cover on and doing it again. I think it's best to only do 3 ounces at a time, otherwise you get too much powder in the blender.

You can then add the powdered sugar to the blender if it was clumpy, or mix it in a bowl with the almond paste if not. I did this step to taste, using my memory of the correct sweetness, which is not very sweet. Really fine marzipan should be half sugar and half almonds. Commercial Marzipan can go down to only 1/4 almonds and 3/4 sugar to save on costs since almonds are rather expensive, but that mixture is way too sweet. Don't use granulated sugar, use powdered.

Now with the sugar and almond powder in a bowl, I added about a 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract. Real vanilla, not fake. It's getting hard to find real vanilla due to civil upheaval problems in Madagascar. Most real vanilla comes from northeastern Madagascar. I read recently that the age of consent in Madagascar is 21, and that is the oldest age of consent in any country. That seems so strange. Madagascar has lots of adorable ring tailed lemurs and those weird Baobob trees. My best friend growing up is now a renowned expert in the Malagasy language that is spoken in Madagascar. He spends time there on occasion. I should ask him next time I talk to him about the vanilla situation. In any case, if you don't want to use real vanilla, stop right now! Just get the cheap marzipan at the cake store. We are making real marzipan here. Let's proceed.

Toss in a bit of lemon juice as well. Not too much, maybe a teaspoon or a half teaspoon. We don't want this too wet. Oh, and that egg white. Put that in now.

Stir and stir and stir. It should seem like you don't have enough liquid, but keep mixing. I do this by hand with a fork, not by any electro-mechanical device. You're going for a consistency kind of like bread dough. Once it gets to be pretty well mixed, you can fold and knead it, and dip back down to pick up that stray powder that didn't mix in yet. Kneading and folding helps the almond oils release into the sugar. Then roll it up into a ball. My marzipan ball was about 5 inches across or so. Now, stick this in a container in the refrigerator for a day or so, and then you can cut of slices pretty thin about 1/8 inch thick. Eat with strawberries and or serve with brandy or something. Not sure about the brandy, it seems a good idea but I don't have any brandy. Let me know if you try and it seems a good pairing. I tried it with beer since beer is also German and I found that beer isn't the right thing to have with marzipan, it clashes.

Very high end pastry shops in big cities might have marzipan sculptures in the display case. These will be little apples or oranges or such things that are sculpted out of marzipan which can be sort of like edible Play Doh to a baker. They paint the outsides with food colors and glaze them to make them shiney. These little treats are probably just like real marzipan, but I wouldn't know since I would never pay $55 for a half size marzipan apple.

In any case, this will introduce you to the delights of genuine marzipan. Don't eat a lot of it at once. Good marzipan is something you just eat a tiny bit of at a time.