How To Make Triple Chocolate Marzipan Clusters

Hello, I'm Annabelle, and I'm Billie, and we're from Confection Perfection in Maidstone based in Kent. We're experts in all aspects of cake decorating and today, we're going to be showing you about marzipan and cake decorating. So, now I'm going to make some triple chocolate marzipan clusters.

Now, the way to do this is you need a chunk of marzipan, about 500 grams depending on how many you want to make. You divide that into three blocks. I've got smaller portions here just to show you and to a third of it, you're going to add candy cherries, another will be candy ginger and another will be dried apricots.

So, I've done the cluster of cherries already. I'm now going to show you adding candy ginger. These are kneaded into the marzipan so that it's nice and even.

It makes it really quite sticky so if you use some icing sugar, that will help reduce the stickiness. If you really push it with the heel of your hand, it can mix nice and evenly. So as you got all your sections mixed with their flavorings, you ca just break off small portions.

You want to cluster it nice and delicate. So, you break up a little bit, you just roll that in your hand and leave on some greaseproof paper. If you're finding it too sticky, you can use some icing sugar on your hands as well so that will help.

Now, the balls you have now put in the fridge, to let you show, just whilst your preparing the amount of chocolate. So, I've already got melted chocolate here. We've done it over bain-marie just to melt it nice and evenly and you can use it but do it very very gently.

So once they are set, I've got some ones here all set earlier. Now, you want to dip your ginger in the dark chocolate, the cherries in the milk chocolate and your apricot in the white chocolate. The flavors complement one another very very well.

So, let's dip. Just drop one of your balls there, tap it so it's nice and smooth, draw it back onto the greaseproof, then one of the gingers in the dark chocolate. Now, you can use a dipping fork or a spoon for this.

Dipping forks are better but a spoon will work. When you've done one milk and one dark, if you set them next to each other, they will set together basically so that holds their shape. And you want to take one of the apricots dropped into the base of white chocolate, cover it nice and evenly, and you just knock that off so it will again drain a cluster.

Now, once you've done all of your clusters, you can put them in the fridge to let them set nice and until they're dried. So, to decorate the clusters, you can do whatever and we've chosen to use melted chocolate and we can do dots, lines and swirls, anything that you want to, really. So if you're chocolate has hardened a little bit, just re-melt it.

We've got a greaseproof paper bag here which we've snipped a tiny hole at the end. Just put some chocolate in there and then this works better when your clusters are set. So, once you've taken them out the fridge, it's better to do this.

You could just start squeezing and then rapidly move your hand back and forward over the chocolate and you get a really nice effect and then once that's dry, that will just be lift off there and be left with a pattern as we've done on these ones. .