Food Encyclopedia

marzipan

A sweet, pliable mixture of almond paste, sugar and sometimes unbeaten egg whites. It's often tinted with food coloring and molded into a variety of forms including fruits, animals and holiday shapes. Some fancy commercial marzipan fruit is colored so convincingly that it can almost be mistaken for the real thing. Marzipan is also rolled into thin sheets and used either to cover cakes or to cut into strips to form ribbons, bows and a variety of other shapes. Marzipan is available in most supermarkets, packaged in cans or plastic-wrapped logs.