Marzipan Christmas Cake

Marzipan Christmas Cake is a recipe for an incredibly delicious Christmas cake. Baked apples make you feel at home among marzipan cream.

Ingredients for Marzipan Christmas Cake:

For the pastry:
6 eggs
300 g sugar
1 pinch of salt
375 g walnut kernels, ground
0.5 tsp cinnamon, ground

For the cream:
625 g whipped cream
250 g marzipan paste
0.5 tsp vanilla pulp
60 g icing sugar
3 teaspoons San-apart
500 g mascarpone
2 tbsp amaretto

For the baked apple filling:
4 apples, fresh
1 tbsp oil
50 g apricots, dried
50 g cranberries, dried or fresh
1 tbsp honey
1 tsp cinnamon
200 ml apple juice
10 g cornflour

For the garnish:
100 g sugar
50 ml water
100 g cranberries, dried or fresh
4 sprigs rosemary

Instructions:

For the base, preheat the oven to 350 °F top/bottom heat. Line a springform pan (∅ 28 cm) with baking paper.

Separate the eggs. Place the egg yolks in a mixing bowl with the sugar and whisk. Beat the egg whites with the salt in another mixing bowl with the whisks of the hand mixer until stiff. Fold the egg white mixture into the egg yolk mixture and briefly stir in the ground walnuts and cinnamon.

Pour the batter into the prepared springform pan and bake in the preheated oven for 40-50 minutes. Check with a chopstick whether the base is baked and remove. Remove the base from the tin and leave to cool on a cooling rack.

Our tip: The bases will be more even if the batter is divided between 3 springform tins (∅ 28 cm) and baked. The baking time is then reduced to 20-25 minutes per base.

For the cream, dice the marzipan. Place in a saucepan with 275 g cream and vanilla pulp and stir. Heat everything while stirring until a homogeneous mass is formed. Transfer the marzipan cream to a bottle and chill, covered.

In the meantime, wash the apples for the baked apple filling, quarter them, core them and cut them into small pieces. Heat the oil in a saucepan. Briefly sauté the apples in it. Add the apricots, cranberries, honey and cinnamon and deglaze with 150 ml apple juice. Mix the starch with the remaining apple juice. Add to the apple mixture, stir in and bring the filling to the boil for 1 minute or allow to thicken briefly. Leave to cool.

For the cream, whip the remaining cream (350 g) with icing sugar and San-apart until stiff. Stir in the mascarpone until smooth. Gradually stir in the marzipan-cream mixture and the Amaretto. Then fold in the stiffly whipped cream.

Cut the base in two horizontally to make three layers. Place the bottom cake layer on a cake plate. Place the cake ring around the base. Spread a third of the marzipan cream on top. Spread the baked apple filling over the cream.

Place the second base on top. Spread a third of the cream on top again. Place the last cake layer on top. Cover the cake and chill for about 2 hours to set. Set aside the rest of the cream for the garnish.

In the meantime, for the garnish, put 50 g sugar and water in a small saucepan, bring to the boil and simmer for 3-4 minutes. Put the remaining sugar on a plate. Briefly dip the cranberries and the rosemary sprigs into the sugar solution and leave to drain. Immediately roll them in the remaining sugar until they are covered all around.

To serve, loosen the cake ring and lift off. Spread the remaining marzipan cream all around the cake. Decorate with sugared cranberries and rosemary sprigs.