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).