Dear Marzipaned Ones,
You'll recall I mentioned a cookie recipe to use your lovingly made marzipan in? Today is the day your marzipan has been waiting for.
This is a cookie with a colorful name- Napoleonshatte, or Napoleon's Hat. The peculiar thing is, the hat I found claiming to be one of Napoleon's own, is one corner shy of looking like Napoleonshatte cookies. Why, then, are the cookies tricorne and Napoloeon's hat bicorne? I have no answer, dear ones; I can only offer that the tricorne predates the bicorne.
More on Napoleon's hat, here.
To make these three-cornered beauties, use the almond paste from an earlier post, and this recipe for Napoleonshatte from Gitte.
If you prefer to make your almond paste into marzipan (recalling that the main difference between the two is in the ratio of sugar to almonds), add confectioner's sugar to your almond paste. Knead it in, or use a food processor. For the "best" marzipan, you would want to make a fondant, and then add that to your almond paste. Making fondant requires spotlessly white kitchen garb, so that absolutely no specks of lint will discolor your silken fondant. I had to make four batches before I got a successful one, and it wasn't terribly white, either! As I said, confectioner's sugar works very well indeed.
While you are working on these excellent cookies, listen to My Hat It Has Three Corners/Carnival of Venice performed here by Andre Rieu.
As an aside, rumor has it that Andre Rieu is playing a 1667 Stradivarius. Andre Rieu is a sort of a pop-star phenom of Strauss Waltzes; which is a bit of a purple cow for the classical music world, meaning, it would rather see than be one.
