Not very artistic; what can I make as an alternative to marzipan fruits?

dolly_day_dream

Badger_Lady wrote: »

I just make marzipan with icing sugar, water and almond essence. It's basically almond-flavoured icing (the shop bought stuff never contains egg etc).

Many thanks I wondered if that would work - what if I added ground almonds? - do you think it would still work. I am vegan so eggs etc are out.

Gingernutmeg

I have made 'marchpane' in the past (for a Tudor recreation) and if I remember rightly it only had ground almonds, icing sugar and rosewater in it. I *think* it was equal quantities of almonds and sugar, which was then moistened with the rosewater and gently mixed to a paste - it'd be more expensive but if you grind your own almonds they tend to be oilier so you need less rosewater. It took a while to mix and was a little oily, but when it had dried out it tasted surprisingly nice. You couldn't model it though, I just made a big slab on some ricepaper and then gilded and iced it. It might be worth trying as a vegan alternative - you could probably use orange-flower water instead if you're not keen on the rosewater.

Badger_Lady

dolly_day_dream wrote: »

Many thanks I wondered if that would work - what if I added ground almonds? - do you think it would still work. I am vegan so eggs etc are out.

Me too! I can't see there would be any harm adding ground almonds... although they are a lot coarser than sugar so might be harder to model, as Gingernutmeg says.
^ based on experience with sand sculpture; it only works with fine sand!