Marzipan Vegetables: Pumpkin

Author Notes

Oh gosh! I wish I had the whole week to play with these. I make small marzipan candies using a host of recipes, some even from potatoes! My joy is painting them with natural food coloring where I blend my own colors. Usually I am doing portraits in miniature of actual fruits and vegetables. Sometimes I use these on chocolate frosted cakes to create my mini gardens. But I have to drive to Queens this weekend to hang a show of my abstract miniature landscape paintings for an opening later at a Thai cafe there! Still, I just had to make the time to create a series of mini pumpkins for this theme. For a very fun children's party, have each child make one. Kids are very good at molding these, especially if they are to carve jack-o-lanterns using toothpicks! It is easy to have work stations set up with toothpicks, paint brushes and food colors, which are all water soluble for easy clean up. It is then very quick to paint these for a take home treat. - Sagegreen —Sagegreen

Test Kitchen Notes

Such fun! I had a great time making these delightful marzipan pumpkins. Attempts at sculpted, painted realism gave way to a more stylized version suitable for my skill level. I rolled marble-sized pieces of marzipan dough into balls in my hands, dipped the balls into a saucer of food coloring and then rolled them around in my hands again until they were sufficiently orange. Pushing a clove into the top for the stem shaped the ball into more of a pumpkin form. To mix orange from the India Tree natural food colors, I needed mostly yellow with one drop of red and a micro drop of blue. For Jack-o-lanterns I painted faces with melted chocolate, and alternately, pressed in tiny triangles of dried pear or candy corn. This recipe is terrific for all ages. - Apple Annie —The Editors