Christmas Calendar 2013 Day 6 - Dates with marzipan stuffing

Again I have been on the outlook for new suggestion on Christmas candy, so I both taste and share new recipes with you. The recipe I found in the Christmas recipe attachment to the weekly magazine "Alt for Damerne" issue 46/2013.

I made two change to the recipe. The first modification: I used 2 mandarins instead of the orange, as my weekly vegetable box contained mandarins instead of orange. The second modification: I decided to add icing sugar into the marzipan mass in order to make more dry, as the juice from the mandarins was making the marzipan mass quiet wet.

Half way through the process I got tried of removing stones from the dates and filling them with the marzipan stuffing, so I decided to stop and taste one of dates without chocolate coating to see, if I could continue my "work". And the taste was just so overly sweet even for me with my "sweet tooth, so I decided not make any more of these dates. So if you do not very sweet Christmas candy, do not even start to make these dates !!!

Dates with marzipan stuffing:

• 75 g walnuts
• 300 g marzipan
• 2 organic mandarins - zest and juice
• 4-6 tablespoons icing sugar
• 500 g big dates
• 200 g dark chocolate

1. Roast the walnuts at 180'C for 8-10 minutes.
2. Remove the skin of the walnuts by rubbing them with paper towel.
3. Chop the walnuts into medium chunks.
4. Knead the chopped walnuts, mandarin zest and juice together with the marzipan. If needed add the icing sugar to adjust the texture from being wet to dry.
5. Remove the stone from the dates.
6. Fill the "stone hole" in the date with ½ teaspoon of the marzipan stuffing.
7. Melt the dark chocolate, as usual I use the microwave oven for the purpose.
8. Dip one of the date with marzipan stuffing into the melted chocolate.
9. Place the chocolate coated date on a piece of baking paper, until the chocolate coating has dried up.
10. Store the dates in an air tight container.