I love marzipan. I love it plain, covered in dark chocolate, and on cake (I make a kick-ass lemon cake that I cover with marzipan, if I do say so myself). There are many regrets I have about my former marriage, but perhaps one of the worst is that I let my caterer convince me that I couldn't have marzipan on my wedding cake because it was August. A decade later and I'm still bummed I didn't get that marzipan wedding cake (never mind the failed marriage, it's the lost opportunity of cake and marzipan that I'm really mourning now.)This summer we visited my parents' old stomping grounds, Astoria NY. Hidden there, in its tiny, original storefront that's been in operation for longer than my Dad's been alive is La Guli's Bakery. They make marzipan. It looks like this:
And this: 
The peaches have little chocolate pits. The figs look like figs. There was also a pear, an apple, and a cherry but I ate them so quickly I didn't get to photograph them.
Oh, and they have the best spumoni water ice in the whole, wide world. And they still use baker's twine, pulled from those overhanging metal thingees, to wrap their boxes.Here's to food as art, businesses that last because they are so damn good, and holding fast to beautiful traditions like bakery boxes strung together with red and white cotton twine.
