ALMONDS AND SUGAR THE WORLD’S MOST ELEGANT SWEET

MARZIPAN: The world’s largest producer of marzipan, Odense Marcipan, located in Hans Christian Andersen’s native town, produces more than 13,500 tons of this divine delicacy every year.

Danes have a sweet tooth, and their ability to produce confectionery to match has made Danish sweets such as wine gums, liquorice, chocolate and chewing gum into big export successes. Blanched almonds, mixed with sugar and kneaded into the loveliest marzipan, to such an extent that the country has the world’s largest individual producer of this costly and elegant sugary delicacy, Odense Marcipan. Together with the rest of Denmark’s marzipan production, which mainly takes place at the confectionery giant Toms Group, it makes Denmark the second biggest marzipan producer.

Tradition
“Marzipan is a divine product which forms part of a large number of different products – from sweets to cakes and a lot of fine desserts,” says director Niels Søgaard of Odense Marcipan. Marzipan particularly hits the taste buds of consumers in the Northern hemisphere, despite the fact that from a historical point of view, marzipan is not a Danish tradition. There is still debate as to whether the sweetened raw almond mix was invented in Italy or Germany.

We can only say that we make the finest quality product, and so have become one of the world’s largest producers. We also believe that it pays to produce quality.” Odense Marcipan produces about 13,500 tons of marzipan annually. The main ingredient is almonds from California and Spain, the latter providing the necessary bitter almonds which help to create the unmistakable taste and aroma.

170 variants
“Apricot kernels have the same ability although we consider it to be cheating slightly,” says Niels Søgaard. “The genuine, raw almond mix must be made from almonds and sugar. That is our quality parameter. But tastes do differ. In Denmark we sell more or less nothing else than the genuine raw mix where the almonds are ground fairly coarsely. In Sweden they prefer the marzipan to be somewhat sweeter, and in Japan, which is a very interesting market to us, they prefer the genuine mix, but ground somewhat finer.” Marzipan has many different forms. Odense Marcipan produces 170 different variants, all made to customers’ specific wishes.

Christmas ritual
“Since 40% of our production goes to the food industry for further processing, it matters what kind of marzipan we supply. In some cases it needs to be rolled out, in others it is formed, and again in others it is a filling or decoration. Each individual variant must have its own characteristics, quality or colour. We are able to supply that. But all of it is based on sugar and almonds. On that point we don’t compromise.” In addition to producing marzipan, the company manufactures soft nougat made from ground hazelnuts, sugar and cocoa butter. The two products are among the favourites when homemade confectionery is made in the months leading up to Christmas. They form an almost divine alliance in your mouth – and a divine greasiness on children’s fingers. But that is all part of the Danish Christmas ritual.

Personal wedding cakes Marzipan is the main ingredient of the centrepiece at Danish feasts – the almond cake. It consists of a number of baked marzipan rings in different sizes which are placed one on top of the other to create a tower. The largest ring is placed at the bottom, with progressively smaller rings placed on top. The whole ensemble is glued together with chocolate or sugar and traditionally decorated with sugar icing and small paper Danish flags. The almond cake is a fixed requirement for all Danes on New Year’s Eve, and is eaten at midnight and washed down with champagne. There are few people in the world who know more about the various application opportunities of marzipan than Peter Kofod, Odense Marcipan’s chief confectioner. His job is to carry out marzipan product development especially for the bakery and confectionery sector. Among the company’s new initiatives is the development of a manual for making a personal wedding cake. The manual gives bakers and confectioners the opportunity to create exactly the wedding cake which the happy couple wants. In size, shape and colour.