Meet Uny the Marzipan Pig

Next off the spray booth runway is Uny, the smallest piggy of them all.  But don't let Uny's size (about an inch high) fool you.  Uny may be the mightiest of all the marzipan pigs.  Uny's certainly the bravest.  That's because Uny is our transgender marzipan pig.

I made Uny in honor of my nephew, who used to be my niece.  Let's hope there is room in every family for every type of pig, regardless of how they identify.

Uny tends to get a little cold in winter, hence the sweater.  I believe it was a Christmas gift, given the colors.  Don't you think it  brings out the sparkle in the eyes?

Heidi the Marzipan Pig

The first Piggy out on the runway is Heidi.  She is the most traditional of all the pigs I made.  But when I make her next time, I will put a little gold disk in her mouth to represent a gold coin, a symbol of wealth.

Heidi has been at a Swiss spa in the Alps, munching away on a diet of sweet green meadow grasses and alpine herbs.  At night she got mud baths and massages, which accounts for her lovely glowing complexion.  You have to admit, that spa she went to really made quite a transformation from that leaden figure of just a few days ago, 

and that pale complexion she previously had.

With those lovely spots, I don't think that she'll have any trouble finding a dance partner to wallow around with, do you?

Painting Marzipan Pigs

Naked pigs are not my thing, so it's off to the spray booth for the marzipan pigs.  

My friend Jim can make just about anything to do with wood, and he made this spray booth for decorating my confections.  I got the plans from here.  The booth is great.  A big thank you to the folks at Vent Works who shared their knowledge and know how.  I've got a couple of airbrushes, one for using with cocoa butter for the chocolate decoration, and another for use with the food color for the marzipan.  When the fan is going with the booth, you'd never know it.  It does the job.  The filter proves it.  It is a rainbow of colors.

While the piggies are made from old molds in traditional shapes, there is nothing saying that we have to paint them up in a traditional way.  I pop the pigs on top of a metal stand that I picked up at a ceramics supply house.  It is used for putting things on and lets you turn it around to make access easy to all parts of the object.  Like a lazy Susan on a stand.  

Using a combination of paintbrushes and the airbrush, I gussie up the pigs.  After all, they are going out for New Year's, so they have to look their best.  Plain pink just won't cut it, after all.  Remember that line from "La Cage aux Folles" where Albion has his black suit and white shirt on, and then hikes up his pants to show his bright pink socks?  "Always a hint of color".  Well, we are sort of channeling that in our dress design - a hint of color.  And a goodly amount of luster dust to top things off as well.  It is New Year's Eve after all that we are dressing them for.

Molding Marzipan

There's more than one way to make a marzipan pig, and working with marzipan is a bit like working with clay.  You can shape it by hand and mold it.  You can also put it in a mold (although that is not like clay, as you want your marzipan to be stiff, not like slip for clay).  I decided to use some of the vintage marzipan molds I got a few years back, and mold up some marzipan pigs for the New Year to bring health, wealth, and luck.  I figure I can use all of that I can get.

While you can use commercially available marzipan, I like to make my own.  Why?  Because I can control the sweetness of the final product.  I find most commercial marzipan paste too sweet for my taste.  I like to actually taste the almonds.  The downside might be that the marzipan I make is never going to be as smooth as the commercial brands, because I use the food processor to make mine, while the commercial brands employ special equipment to get that fine texture.  But I've come to prefer a bit of texture, and really appreciate the flavor less sugar gives in the final product.  I pretty much bring the food processors to the brink of disaster running them for so long to get the texture as fine as I can.  Someday I'll have a professional processor and a whole new world of marzipan texture will open up for me, but until that day, I'm happy with what I've got.

Marzipan is sticky.  It wants to stick to the molds.  I had the hardest time working with the molds.  Some folks said to grease the molds.  Some said to dust with confectioners sugar.  Some said to line with plastic wrap (?).  What worked for me was filling the molds as is, and then popping them in the freezer for a bit.  

Here's what the piggies looked like in all their naked glory after they were unmolded.  They have to sit for a day to dry a bit before they get decorated.

The tallest is about 3 inches high.  The smallest about an inch.  I guess a little marzipan goes a long way.

Some of the molds that came over in the shipment from Belgium had the actual positive figure with them made from lead.  No wonder the shipment was so heavy!

Marzipan Pigs - Ring in the New Year with Health, Wealth & Luck

As a child, winter time always included lots of great German ethnic food.  There was the lebkuchen that my grandmother and mother made in the summer and stored away for Christmas, the lightly sweet stollen that always graced the breakfast table on Christmas morning, and then there was the marzipan.  From Germany boxes would arrive, filled with the small fruit shapes of oranges, lemons, bananas and apples.  And in my Christmas stocking there was always a marzipan pig.  I made quick work of the candy, and was always on the lookout for when the adults would leave the living room where the open box of marzipan fruits were on display for guests.  It was amazing how fast guests seemed to go through that marzipan...

Now that I'm older, I still have a soft spot for marzipan.  Indeed, my brother sends me a huge box of those little fruit shapes every year to make sure that I am not without during the holidays.  I try not to open it.  So far that box has been sitting in the living room unopened for a week now.  I guess as an adult I realize why that box was always out for guests.  The commercial mass produced marzipan just doesn't make my adult taste buds happy.  But that doesn't make me love it any less.  I just had to learn to make it on my own.

So I did.  I could mold by hand the basic fruit shapes.  Still, I longed for the fanciful shapes of my childhood.  And then I discovered a person in Belgium that had been cleaning out an old factory, and came across boxes of old metal marzipan molds.  Heavy industrial molds that were (to me) in eclectic shapes (think crayfish and leeks).  Only problem:  he only shipped within the EU.  No problem: I have a brother who lives in the EU.  So they got shipped to him.  Since my brother comes to visit the States only every few years, I knew that I'd have to just buy ALL the molds.   New problem:  how to get more than 50 Kg of molds over in carry on baggage without paying a surcharge. Well, after much creative wrangling, the molds made it from Belgium to Copenhagen to Florida and then out to California.  Freight charge $85.

The seller had a LOT of pig molds.   Why?  Frankly I can't figure out why some of them got made.  I mean, I have pig molds of trotters and bacon and sausage.  As if they were custom made for a butcher.  But the stand alone pigs have been traditional gifts for the New Year because they are symbols of prosperity and luck and health.  So let's bring out the marzipan molds and make some traditional pigs to ring in the New Year with health, wealth, and good luck.

Here's what we'll start with.  A stand alone very dapper pig wearing a top hat, and carrying a purse (wealth) and some four leaf clovers (luck).   

Enter the Dragon

The largest mold I have is a dragon, that was made in Italy specifically for the Chinese Year of the Dragon.  But why use it for just that?  Dragons are too much fun to just take off the shelf every 12 years.  This dragon weighs in at 4+ ounces, and easily makes an entire meal  can be shared between 6 people.  While it takes a long time to paint these by hand and airbrush, they sure are a lot of fun to do.  Lately I've been filling them with a ganache that has PopRocks© in it.  Dragons are supposed to sizzle, after all.

I am Thankful for: Chocolate Covered Flaming Hot Cheetos

Each year my friend Christie hosts an amazing foodie party where the guests bring a food dish based on a specific theme.   Competition is fierce.

Christie's husband always has some killer submissions.  And I've learned that he has a secret ingredient that makes it's way into all of his creations: flaming hot Cheetos.

Now the first year when I was invited the food theme was grilled cheese.  I ate his grilled cheese creation with more than a bit of trepidation.  It had Velveeta, spam, and flaming hot Cheetos in it.  To be honest, I thought I was going to be sick, but since he was the host, I had to try it.  I went back for thirds...

This year we were lucky to share Thanksgiving with Christie and her extended family.  I got off easy, I just had to bring chocolates.  But not just any chocolates would do for her husband.  Yup, that's right:  Chocolate Covered Flaming Hot Cheetos.  I'm pretty sure that's going to be a new Thanksgiving food tradition at their house.  That is, if her husband shared with anyone else.