Alternative to marzipan

FraochNM

I love baking!

I have only ever really used simple icing but now I want to move on and use the ready to roll icing. I know you need to use marzipan underneath to seal it. But I don't like it, and nobody in my family does either. Is there any other alternative?

Acoshla

Do you mean for use on a fruit cake? Because you don't have to use that on a regular cake, actually you don't have to use it on a fruit cake either if you don't like it. It's original purpose was to stop the colour from the rich fruit cake soaking through the white royal icing, but as royal icing isn't what you'd be using you don't need it to serve that purpose. If you wanted to get a smooth service that you couldn't achieve on a fruit cake with one layer you could use a thin layer of sugarpaste/fondant first to give a smoother base for the top layer.

rubadub

I only recently found out that marzipan is supposed to be made from almonds & sugar, I love both of those but despise marzipan. I also hate "almond slices".

I can only guess this is since almond slices and cheap marzipan is made with almond essence, which must be what disgusts me. Just like I hate strawberry icepops but love strawberries.

I would like to get some essence free marzipan. I may well have been offered it but presumed I would hate it...

I see shamrock "ready to roll" icing on tesco online, probably a similar consistency.

Animord

rubadub wrote: »

I only recently found out that marzipan is supposed to be made from almonds & sugar, I love both of those but despise marzipan. I also hate "almond slices".

I can only guess this is since almond slices and cheap marzipan is made with almond essence, which must be what disgusts me. Just like I hate strawberry icepops but love strawberries.

I would like to get some essence free marzipan. I may well have been offered it but presumed I would hate it...

I see shamrock "ready to roll" icing on tesco online, probably a similar consistency.

I also hate that 'marzipan' taste - it's so chemical. You could try making some - its pretty easy - Delia Smith has a good recpie and try it without adding the fake almond gunge - I make it myself every year and use a good quality almond essence and its lovely. (In fact I find it quite hard to put it on the cakes as I want to just eat the flipping stuff):P

FraochNM

I thought marzipan was to lock in moisture? It stopped the cake from drying out?

Does anyone know where to get tools to help put on icing better? Smoothers some books called them? Any shops in Ireland that does edible glitter, sugarcraft tools etc?

Acoshla

stuff4cakes.ie has all that stuff, great online ordering service, very fast.