Gift Marzipan Pig Candy to your loved ones to wish them prosperity and good fortune!
Homemade pink pigs made of marzipan almond paste are a symbol of good luck.
Prepare your own homemade marzipan pigs.
It's fun and your family and friends will appreciate the cute delicious sweet lucky bite.
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📕 What's a Marzipan Pig?
A marzipan pig is traditionally prepared and gifted during Christmas and New Years to family and friend to wish them Good luck for the coming year.
The good luck piglet, prepared with pink colored Marzipan mass, looks usually cute, just like a cartoon.
Different sizes and looks are also available commercially.
Marzipan is prepared with peeled round almonds and sugar.
🇳🇴 Traditions
The Marzipan pig tradition is still popular in Scandinavian countries such as Norway as well as the German-speaking countries, including Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
In Norway and Denmark, the marzipan pig is gifted during Christmas.
In fact, people make a game of it by hiding a small pink piggy in the Norwegian Christmas Rice Porridge.
In the German-speaking countries, marzipan pigs are gifted before midnight on Silvester.
Silvester is the last day of the year, the 31st December
By gifting marzipan pigs you essentially wish someone the best of luck for the coming year.
The marzipan pig is known as Marzipan Schwein in German.
We have a saying in German when someone was lucky in a situation.
We say "Schwein gehabt", which means directly translated "you got a pig" means you were lucky.
It indicates, indirectly, that someone close to you gifted you a New Year's pig to "gift you luck" for the coming year!
🇩🇪 Other German New Year's Symbols
For New Year's we gift other good luck symbols and charms as well.
Usually, they are made of marzipan or chocolate but they can be prepared with non-edible things as well.
These are some of the popular and common German good luck symbols besides the pink piggy:
- Clover
- Chimney Sweep
- Red Mushroom
- Horse Shoe
- Ladybug
- Golden Coin
🍪 Ingredients
You will mostly need only 2-3 raw ingredients to prepare these good luck marzipan pigs.
- raw marzipan mass - I prepare my own vegan-friendly marzipan and I wrote a post about that. (the lin is further on top)
- food coloring - Red food coloring to be more precise and maybe in your corner of the world you can get special marzipan colors. Otherwise, regular food coloring will work great too.
- cacao or cocoa powder - I use tiny amounts of cocoa powder for the eyes. You can skip that ingredient or use chocolate sprinkles or black food coloring pens instead or you can leave the eyes in the natural marzipan color. I like it simple and cocoa was the fastest option to create eyes.
🧰 Tools
You don't need a mold to prepare marzipan pigs.
In fact, you can prepare the edible candy pigs by shaping them by hand or by using marzipan/fondant modeling tools to create details such as the legs, eyes, and snout.
More marzipan treats:
Dear Reader, who's the lucky one getting your homemade marzipan pig?
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📖 Recipe
Good Luck Marzipan Pig Candy
Ingredients
- Marzipan Raw Mass *see Notes
- Red Food Coloring
- Cocoa Powder Unsweetened optional
Instructions
- Keep all the model tools and ingredients ready.
- Cut some of the marzipans and cut this piece into half too. Take one of the pieces into your hand and color it with some of the food coloring (small amount).
- Work the color into the marzipan until it's fully colored. Work the other plain marzipan into the red marzipan if it turned out too dark in color. You want a pink piggy.
- Cut out the parts: body, head, legs, ears, snout, and tail
- Shape the body and head (watch the video to see how). Shape the legs too, ears, snout, and tail.
- Stick together the head, body, and legs. You can use some water to help you stick together if you like.
- Smooth out the shape with the modeling tools and create details such as the hooves.
- Stick the curled tail, ears and snout onto the shape. Create eye and snout holes.
- You can fill the eyes with some plain marzipan or black colored marzipan. I like to use simply cocoa powder for the eye details. (simplest and least messy but you need a steady hand)
- Store your marzipan pig in a dry and cool place. Gift it to your loved ones on New Year's day.
Notes
- You can use pastry modeling tools to help you out and get the details right. A toothpick can do the trick too to form the eyes and snout. Or simply use your skilled fingers.
- Make your own Marzipan from scratch at home with raw blanched almonds or buy raw marzipan mass.
- Use Cocoa or Cacao Powder
