These chocolate coated marzipan stars have to be one of the easiest confections you can possibly make!
They take a small amount of time with the chocolate dipping but look really impressive and will be enjoyed by any marzipan lovers who are lucky enough to receive them.
So, how easy is it?
Really easy is the answer!
If you have never made any homemade sweets before, you can easily make these.
They are good for getting little hands involved too – although you may want proceed with caution when it comes to dipping them in the chocolate!!
Ingredients
250g block of marzipan
250g dark chocolate
Icing sugar – for dusting
To make these delicious Chocolate Coated Marzipan Stars, I used white marzipan but golden marzipan is also fine.
Dust your work surface with icing sugar then roll the marzipan to a thickness of 10mm (3/8″).
Take your small cutter and press out as many shapes as you can.
Gather the remaining marzipan together and knead until smooth again. Re-roll the marzipan and continue to cut out shapes until all of the marzipan is used up.
I used a 3cm cutter and managed to make 47 stars. You can make more with a slightly smaller cutter. Other shapes work well too – hearts can look very pretty!
Place the shapes onto a tray lined with greaseproof paper ready for coating in chocolate.
Melting the Chocolate
You have to take a little care when melting chocolate so as not to spoil it but as long as you make sure that water doesn’t get near it everything should be fine! The main danger is steam mixing in with the melted chocolate, which will make it seize. The chocolate will go very stiff and lumpy, which is not at all what we want to happen.
For the very best results, the chocolate needs to be tempered. This isn’t as scary as it sounds and by following the simple ‘seeding’ method, you will have perfect chocolate covered sweets, so it is worth giving it a go!
If you find the thought too daunting or if you don’t have a digital thermometer (put one onto your wish list right now! – see our recommendation for our favourite thermometer at the bottom of this post) then simply melt all of the chocolate in one go (following the guidelines below) and dip your marzipan stars. They won’t be quite as shiny and will take longer to set but will still result in a delicious chocolate!
Tempering Chocolate
To temper the chocolate, place a bowl over saucepan of water and check that the bottom of the bowl does not touch or sit in the water at all. We want only the steam from the water to heat the bowl, gently melting the chocolate.
Remove the bowl and heat the saucepan of water up to fast simmering point.
Turn off the heat and place the bowl back onto the saucepan.
Break up 150g of the chocolate into squares and place into the bowl. Leave for a few minutes to allow the chocolate to start to melt.
Stir the chocolate together until it is all melted. As soon as it has melted, check the temperature of the chocolate with a digital thermometer (see our recommendation below if you don’t already have one).
The reading needs to be between 46.1°c – 48.8°c. At this point all of the cocoa butter crystals have melted. Once the chocolate has reached this temperature, remove the bowl from the saucepan.
Leave the melted chocolate to cool slightly while you chop the other 100g of chocolate into small pieces.
Stir this chopped chocolate into the melted chocolate and stir well until it is all combined.
If some of the chocolate will not melt it is better to take any lumps out rather than re-heat the chocolate as you run the risk of getting it too hot, melting the cocoa butter crystals again.
If this does happen at any point, all is not lost as you just heat it back up to the temperatures given above and re-seed with more chopped chocolate.
Dipping
Now all is ready to dip your marzipan shapes!
Drop one into the melted chocolate and turn it over so that it gets completely covered.
Use a fork to lift it out of the chocolate bath and scrape the bottom of the fork over the edge of the bowl or use the back of a knife. This will remove excess chocolate from the bottom.
Slide the chocolate covered star back onto the greaseproof paper. Do each one in turn until they are all coated.
Leave to set before packing into pretty gift boxes or bags.
Any left over chocolate can be spooned onto the greaseproof paper to make discs or buttons!
Recommendations
Thermapen – click here for more information
Small fondant cutters – click here for more information