Marzipan Hearts
Introduction
If you're short of time, you can cheat in this recipe by using naturally coloured ready-made marzipan instead of home-made - you'll need about 200g.
Ingredients
| 100g | ground almonds |
| 50g | golden caster sugar |
| 50g | icing sugar, plus extra for dusting |
| 2-3 tbsp | beaten egg |
| 1 tsp | orange juice |
| red food colouring | |
| edible gold glitter |
Essential kit
You will need a 4cm heart-shaped cutter and 10-12 lollipop sticks.
Instructions
You will need:
4cm heart-shaped cutter
10-12 lollipop sticks
Put the ground almonds into a bowl with the sugars. Male a well in the middle and stir in the beaten egg and orange juice with a wooden spoon. Use your hands to knead everything together into a paste, then wrap in cling film and chill in the fridge for 1 hour.
Lightly dust a board with icing sugar and roll out the chilled marzipan until it's about 1cm thick. Stamp out 10-12 hearts using a 4cm cutter, rerolling the marzipan as necessary.
Push a lollipop stick through the pointed end of each heart and lay out to dry on a sheet of baking parchment for 4 hours, turning halfway through.
Once the marzipan is dry, toast both sides of each heart with a blowtorch or under a hot grill until lightly browned. Brush the top with the red food colouring, then flick gold glitter all over the surface, Jackson Pollock-style. Allow to dry, then serve.
