Edible lucky charms?! Use this marzipan clover tutorial to surprise your loved ones on New Year’s Eve or St. Patricks Day (make only 3 leaves for the shamrock). You can use them as cupcake toppers or just as cute little handouts or table decorations.
You need:
marzipan (almond paste)
food coloring (buy here*)
chopsticks, round
cookie cutter (optional)
toothpick
Tip: Buy high quality marzipan paste! The percentage of almonds should be high, or else it will just taste sugary and not like almonds at all. If you can’t find good marzipan, you can easily make it yourself. Just search online! There are a lot of easy recipies out there
Before you begin, you need to add powdered sugar to the marzipan paste, or it will be so sticky that you can’t work with it properly.
Tip: Use a kitchen strainer to remove all the lumps from your powdered sugar.
Dust the marzipan paste generously with powdered sugar. Cover all sides with the sugar, so that the marzipan won’t stick to the counter or your kitchen utensils.
To mix the sugar with the marzipan paste, you need a rolling pin! It works best if you put the marzipan paste between two layers of sturdy baking paper, before you roll it out. Otherwise it will just stick to the rolling pin and the kitchen counter. Dust the marzipan paste generously with powdered sugar, roll it out and fold it again. Repeat those steps until you have added enough sugar to the marzipan paste. You can also knead the marzipan paste with your hands. Knead until all is blended nicely.
Add more and more powdered sugar until the marzipan becomes moldable and is not so overly sticky anymore.
Make a marzipan clover!
Add green food coloring (buy here*) to the marzipan. Use your hands to knead the marzipan, until there are no more colored streaks visible. Take care to wear gloves! The food coloring can stain your skin.
If you are satisified with the color, roll out the marzipan like cookie dough. Use a cookie cutter to cut out clovers. Dip it into powdered sugar to avoid it sticking to the marzipan. I looked through my christmas cookie cutters and found one that was roughly shaped like a four-leaf clover.
If you don’t have a suitable cookie cutter, it’s totally fine! You can just as easily draw the raw shape on a piece of cardboard and use ist as a stencil. Cut out the shapes with a knife.
At this point it looks more like some kind of flower, which is nice but not quite what we want. To make it look like a four-leaf clover, you have to shape it with a magic wand. Or better use round chopsticks. – which is exactly what I did.
Use the thinner end of the chopstick and press it sideways into the marzipan to section off the leaves.
The leaves of a lucky clover are not round, they should have a kind of heart-shape. To achieve that, take the thicker end of your chopstick and press it into the marzipan leaves on the top of each arch. Use a slightly slanted angle to make a rounded, oblong indentation.
Now it looks so much more like a marzipan clover! If there is still some powdered sugar visible or you need to fix small mistakes, dip your finger into wather and smooth out the surface.
All done! A marzipan clover is so easy to make and a perfect lucky charm to give away on New Year’s Eve or St. Patricks Day! (If you want to use them for St. Patricks Day, make a three-leaved shamrock.) Use them to decorate cupcakes or eat them like cookies. If you make them in advance and keep them in an airtight container, they will last for a long time!
GOOD LUCK!!
You can also use your marzipan clover as a base for a cute marzipan piggy! If you want to know how to make marzipan pigs – here is the tutorial >>
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