Marzipan Pumpkins - Not as difficult as I thought it would be!

One of the reasons that baking appeals to me is that it's accessible, yet still challenging. I've been baking since I was a little kid; I started baking with my mom when I was 5 or 6 years old. I loved the predictability and the structure of baking. Follow these directions in this order, and at the end you'll have something that resembles the picture in the book. Really, it's a very simple formula.

But for all my experience, there are still many things I've never done while baking. Some of them are things that seemed too difficult or challenging. I try to push myself and try new things. One of these new things was marzipan. I'd never worked with marzipan before. When I was in France last year, I saw tons of marzipan fruits in the market, and they looked beautiful, but very difficult to make.

Really, though, it was silly for me to worry. This called on my experience as a preschool teacher, since it was like playing with playdough. I got my marzipan at Fairway, and I've never looked for it at any other store, but I bet the baking section of a regular grocery store would have marzipan.


I took the marzipan out of the box, and it was wrapped in foil. I cut the ends of the foil and squeezed the marzipan paste out onto a sheet of parchment paper on the counter. I kneaded it once or twice to get it slightly flat and round. I used about 2/3 of the package for orange pumpkins and saved 1/3 for green for stems. To do it again, I'd save much less for green because I really didn't need that much green for the stems.


Wearing gloves, I dabbed orange gel paste food coloring with a toothpick. I continued to knead and add the food coloring until I was happy with the orange color.


I kneaded the marzipan until it was completely orange, then I formed a long snake of marzipan.


I cut the marzipan snake into 24 smaller pieces and rolled each one into a ball.


I dipped a toothpick into some vegetable oil.


This was the trickiest part of the pumpkins. I made a small indentation on the top of each pumpkin with my finger. From the indentation at the top, I dragged the toothpick (use the side of the toothpick, not the pointy tip) down the sides to make the indented ridges. I did 4 or 5 ridges on each pumpkin.


Then I took the green marzipan, combined it with small pieces of the orange and swirled the 2 colors together. When the green and orange were together, I made a small skinny rope and cut it into 24 very small pieces for stems to put on the pumpkins. Placing the stems was really easy, considering that marzipan is about the same consistency as playdough. Just as with playdough, if you want a piece to stick onto another piece, you just push it on and it will stick.


All in all, I should not have been as scared of marzipan as I was. At least pumpkins. Maybe some of those French fruits that I saw in the market would have been harder, but pumpkins were really easy.

If you do some marzipan pumpkins, I would definitely recommend wearing gloves to prevent the food coloring from staining your hands. Also, cover your counter or table with parchment paper to prevent the food coloring from staining.

Marzipan fruits in France. Not as difficult as you might think!