This is a great holiday recipe that is completely vegan and gluten free.

Homemade marzipan is actually very easy to make – the element of skill required in this recipe is tempering the chocolate. I’ve made chocolate covered confections back when I didn’t know what I didn’t know – that is, that just melting chocolate and dipping something in it doesn’t a true chocolate, make. Unless you’re lucky.

It took three tries to get my chocolate into temper. My first mistake was using chocolate chips, which just aren’t high enough quality or formulated to be able to be tempered. My second mistake was using the microwave method. Several websites online swear by this method but it just didn’t work for me. I used a cooking thermometer and the seeding method for the chocolates pictured. This recipe is adapted from the Daring Gourmet.

Ingredients

• 2 cups almond meal
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 2 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 2 tsp high quality food-grade rose water
• 6-8 tbsp clear corn syrup

Yield: approx. 2 dozen slices of marzipan for coating

Pulse the almond meal in a food processor to break up any clumps. Add the powdered sugar and pulse until fully blended. Pulse in the almond extract and rose water. Gradually add the corn syrup, 1 tbsp at a time, until you start to get a thick, but somewhat loose dough.

Remove from the food processor and knead a few times until the dough stays together. Roll the marzipan into 1 or 2 logs. I formed mine into a rectangular log for this batch.

Wrap the log(s) and refrigerate.

When the marzipan is cold, slice with a non-serrated knife. Coat in tempered chocolate and let sit until set.

To learn how to temper chocolate, I recommend Epicurious. Learn from my mistake and make sure to buy good quality chocolate. I used Lindt dark chocolate 70%. The first ingredient should be cocoa mass and there should be cocoa butter in the ingredients as well. Of course you could splurge at get true couverture chocolate but after all the other already very pricey ingredients in this recipe, I settled on the middle ground.