Marzipan
Marzipan has never made me sad before. Les Miserable, The Fault in our Stars and injustice makes me sad, why is it now marzipan? Here I am, eating marzipan straight from the block, trying to keep it together so my tears do not flood my desk. I only have one tissue left and I am not wasting it crying over marzipan.
This particular ‘ready to roll’ Sainsbury’s marzipan arrived on Tuesday afternoon, along with other necessities from home including a giant tub of palm oil free peanut butter and a large jar of the Christmas edition Nutella. I promptly made a peanut butter and jam sandwich with the last slice of white plastic bread and lashings of Lidl strawberry jam that had yet to be completely consumed by mould. The first bite made jam seep out and run along my thumb. As my mother’s watchful eyes were 156 miles away, I wiped off the jam on my luminous orange trousers which coincidentally needed washing anyway. I promise.
Midway through the second bite, the microwave pinged at me. Having forgotten I had put my room temperature coffee in there a moment before, I was startled by the angry beeping and dropped my sandwich on top of the marzipan packet I was using as a plate. Luckily, the sandwich was eaten with no more incidents — the coffee tasted awful so that went down the sink. I looked at the marzipan. Do I? Should I? No, I shouldn’t… The restraint shocked me. It would have shocked my parents, my grandparents and probably my cats. But they were back home, 156 miles away.
Each October half-term, my mum buys at least 5 kilos of currants, raisins and sultanas, 3 pots of candied orange peel and 2 pots of glace cherries — not to forget the 4 blocks of marzipan and fondant icing. After lugging this dried fruit collection back home, it is all weighed out and chucked in a giant mixing bowl with 2 tablespoons of brandy we found lurking at the back of our cupboard. This is usually the point where I would come into the kitchen and steal all the candied orange peel I can see in the fruit mix and where my dad would come and sniff the brandy as if he were a connoisseur. A packet of marzipan always manages to find itself open and half-finished. How it ends up in our hands, I do not know. How we only have half a packet remaining when it comes to decorating the Christmas cake, I do not know.
I lied. I do know.
It is my job every year to wrap the presents. After finding a Christmas film on Channel 5 that I have not watched more than 3 times, I set to work carefully wrapping everything in recyclable brown paper and sparkly twine from the White Company, but only after my mum has labelled each gift with the name of the recipient. This always seems to take me longer than expected because I am a teenager with a very volatile attention span which means I get distracted by the appalling acting you can only find in Christmas films. It is most definitely a talent.
Guess what else distracts me? Marzipan deliveries. Every 30 minutes I’d get a generous wedge of marzipan delivered to my workstation and, if it was after 5pm, a large gin and tonic with a slice of lime, several juniper berries and a couple of ice cubes. Usually I would forget about the gin and tonic. Who cares about alcohol when marzipan is near?
After the intense sugar hit, sleep would be impossible. I would move on from Channel 5 Christmas films to Netflix Christmas films, eventually falling asleep to dream about gingerbread men and atrocious acting.
A couple of Christmases ago, I was given the honour of putting the vital layer of marzipan on the family Christmas cake. I melted the apricot jam in the microwave then brushed a thin sticky layer over the fruit cake — I ate the rest of the jam. Ah… no marzipan. The honour bestowed upon me would have to wait another year.
Bakery masters, Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood, would be positively amazed at my Christmas cake decorating skills. I should sign up for the Great British Bake Off. One of my many talents is painstakingly moulding fondant icing penguins and snowmen, making sweet little families on top the Christmas cake. I once experimented with a fondant bow to make the Christmas cake look like a Christmas present which my Grandma was very complementary of and this decoration was done 3 years in a row — it was a family favourite. Robins, on the other hand, are not my forte. I tried to make brown icing using red and blue, but my art skills failed me and I made a ugly dirty burgundy colour. The 156 miles between home and I will prevent my family’s Christmas cake being topped by a diseased robin. This time.
Stollen is my favourite bread. Why? Marzipan. The luscious aromas of fresh stollen fills our house through the whole of the Christmas holiday. Christmas Day breakfast is always stollen chock full of spices with smatterings of butter, Buck’s Fizz and Christmas cake in that order. If I was lucky enough to have marzipan in my stocking, I would open the marzipan with a fresh glass of Buck’s Fizz.
Last December, 156 miles didn’t seem far. As a family we had travelled to Croyde, North Devon for Christmas — 189 miles away from home. On Christmas Day I had my bikini on under my fluffy unicorn onesie so I could go swimming in the sea, which, to the horror of my Grandma, I did. Boy it was chilly, but the promise of more warm stollen back in the cosy, comfortable and sea-themed holiday home made me think the cold was worth it.
All that’s left of my marzipan now is the lilac packaging sitting on my desk, just next to the empty blue Kleenex box.
