German Marzipan Pigs Candy Recipe (DIY) (2024)

Gift homemade Marzipan Pigs Candy for new years 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 in Germany.

Planning a New Year's Party? Make my Champagne Jello Shots and these New Years Eve Cookies.

📕 What are Marzipan Pigs?

A marzipan pig is traditionallyprepared and gifted during New Years in the holiday season to family and friends to wish them Good luck for the new year.

The good luck piglet, prepared with pink colored marzipan mass, usually lookscute, just like a cartoon.

Different shapes and appearances are also available commercially, most commonly in Germany, Austria and Scandinavian countries.

Marzipan candy is prepared with blanched and peeled almonds and sugar, and it's typically flavored. Traditional versions also call for egg in the marzipan mass.

If you have leftover raw marzipan, food coloring and cacao, you can also make my creepy Halloween themed marzipan creatures.

🥣 How to make Marzipan Pigs?

Here is an overview of how these candies in the shape of a pig come together. The full recipe with US and metric measurements is located further below with the video instructions.

Step 1 - prep raw mass

Cut about a thumb-sized piece of the marzipan mass for one pig.

Slice this piece into two.

Step 2 - color

Add a small quantity of food coloring to half of the cut marzipan and work the color in with your fingers.

The pig should be pink. Add the second cut marzipan half to the colored part and blend to a lovely pink. (Please, watch my how-to video, which you will find in the recipe card below).

Step 3 - shape body parts

Cut the colored marzipan pieces into body parts. You will need 1 head, 1 body, 4 legs, a snout, a tail and 2 ears.

Shape each body part. The head should be round, the body oval, the legs like sticks, the snout roundish flat, the ears like triangles and the tail elongated and rolled in.

Step 4 - attach body parts

Attach the head, limbs, rolled in tail, ears, and snout to the main larger body. You can use a tiny amount of water to help you stick the body parts.

Step 5 - finish the pig look

Make two holes into the snout (so that it looks like a snout).

Optional: Make two holes for the eyes and fill with a tiny ball of uncolored marzipan. You can color the eyes with cocoa, black food coloring or use a black food color pen.

Shape the legs to piggy legs.

Your DIY marzipan pig is ready and can be gifted and devoured as is!

📖 Recipe

💡 Tips

• You can also use pig molds to make your marzipan pigs. In the video, I used fondant/marzipan sculpting tools.
• Use high-quality marzipan for the best result. Homemade marzipan is a great option because you know what's in it vs. commercial marzipan, which may not contain only almonds.
• You are free to color your pigs the way you like. Pink is the norm, but you should definitely experiment a bit!
• Store your piggie candy in an airtight container away from heat, humidity and direct sunlight. Nonetheless, don't keep them in the fridge in the open or else they will harden. You can keep them in an airtight container in your refrigerator.
• These piggies are best made just a day or two before New Year so that they are still fresh when you gift them. Marzipan can turn hard and stale if you let it sit for too many days.

🐷 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.

Back in the day, they were more commonly made from scratch, but locals tend to buy them in these regions. I make them for family and friends if I can't buy them. I recommend that you check online if you can buy marzipan pigs.

In Norway and Denmark, the marzipan pig is gifted during Christmas. In fact, people make a game of it by hiding an almond in the Risalamande or Risengrynsgrøt rice porridge. The winner gets delicious piggies.

Incidentally, in the German-speaking countries, marzipanpigs are gifted before midnight on Sylvester (31st December) or on New Year's Day (1st January).

By gifting marzipan pigs, you essentiallywish someone the best of luck for the coming year.

The German marzipan pig is known as Marzipan Schwein or Glücksschweinchen (lucky pigglet). We have a saying in German when someone was lucky in a situation.

One of our common expressions is “Schwein gehabt”, which means directly translated “you gota pig”, and that means you were lucky.

It indicates, indirectly, that someone close to you offered you a New Year's pig to“gift you luck” for the coming year! So, as you can see, this small marzipan piglet, is valued!

🇩🇪 Other German New Year's Symbols

For New Year's we gift other good luck symbols and lucky charms as well.

Usually, they are made of marzipan or chocolate, but they can be prepared with non-edible things as well.

Here are some popular and common German good luck symbols, besides the pink piggy:

• Four-Leaf-Clover
• Chimney Sweep
• Red Mushroom
• Horse Shoe
• Ladybug
• Golden Coin