Happy New Year!

May the new year bring us all peace, health and prosperity!!

I hope you had a wonderful holiday season!!  Mine was spent in Germany, with family and friends, and the break was relaxing and restful!  It was great to re-connect with cousins that I hadn’t seen in years – there was plenty of catching-up to do!

There are many different traditions in the world to welcome the new year.  In Germany, chimney sweeps, four-leaf clovers and little piggies are some of the things that symbolise good luck – you can buy little gifts with those themes all over the place.

I decided to make little piggies from marzipan, to give as presents to friends and family at the start of the new year.  They are not difficult to make, I promise!!

Here’s what you need:

• Plain marzipan
• Red food colouring or beetroot juice
• A little icing sugar
• Cloves or nigella seeds for the eyes
• Slivered almonds for the ears
• New pennies or one cent pieces

As you can see, I didn’t have new one cent pieces – the bank didn’t have any new ones.  So here’s a trick to make them shine like new:  I mixed a couple of tablespoons of clear (spirit) vinegar with a few pinches of salt.  All I had to do was to add the coins to the vinegar and watch the patina disappear.  Then I removed the coins from the vinegar, and rinsed and dried them. In no time at all I ended up with a nice pile of shiny coins!!

To make the pigs, I broke the marzipan into pieces, added the food colouring (I used beetroot juice) and kneaded the marzipan until it was evenly coloured.  A little icing sugar helped to offset the added liquid, so that the marzipan did not get too soft.

Here’s what it looked like when it was all finished:

For each pig, I rolled one ball the size of a small walnut and five small balls that were a little smaller than a pea.  The larger ball was elongated a little for the body and four of the little balls formed the feet.  The fifth little ball was used to make the snout, flattened somewhat.  I also rolled a tiny little sausage shape for the tail.

With the help of a toothpick I made two holes in the snout, and then I added the cloves and almond slivers for the eyes and ears.  The piggies were finished off with the lucky pennies in their backs.

I used up all the marzipan – it made quite a few piggies and no two were the same!  My little four-year-old nephews helped me count them, and they even gave names to some of them! 🙂

I left the tray with the piggies out to dry overnight.  The following day I wrapped them.  First I cut cardboard discs, which I covered with silver (aluminium) foil.

 I wrapped each little piggie up in some cellophane, decorated the parcel with some ribbons – et voila!

Of course my little nephews each got a piggie on New Year’s Day!  No prizes for guessing – they had eaten theirs before January 2nd!! 🙂