Petits Fours

 

This Petits Fours post is long overdue and I mean REALLY overdue.  We're talking more than a decade people!  When you put it that way it sounds so bad, right?  My fascination with petits fours really started when I saw them made in this video, Martha Stewart Living Cake Decorating.   I was immediately drawn in by how beautiful and elegant the little cakes were.  They've been on my baking bucket list forever and I finally got my a%$ in gear and made them recently for my Easter table this year.  I packaged four petits fours into clear plastic boxes and placed a favor at each place setting.  I think they look absolutely darling and fit the Easter decor beautifully.

Essentially petits fours are small pieces of pound cake that are filled (I like jam or curd and buttercream) and covered in a glossy fondant.   I started with this recipe for the pound cake from the blog Rose Bakes which is nice and sturdy and holds up really well.  One recipe of the cake makes a half-sheet size pan and yields a lot of petits fours.  I made half of the cake into raspberry petits fours and the other half into lemon petits fours.  I'm  a sucker for fruit flavors and I think the tartness from the raspberry and lemon would be a nice counterbalance to the sweetness from the fondant. 

 

Now let's talk about fondant because that's the Archilles heel of these pretty treats.  The fondant used to coat petits fours is different from the rolled fondant you've seen covering wedding cakes and the like.  Petits fours use a poured fondant.  You can make certainly make it yourself but I was too intimidated (and lazy!) to do that so I bought some premade fondant from Amazon and it worked great.  The only thing I had to do was melt it in a bowl over a pan of simmering water until it was thin enough to coat.  Two tricks I learned from the Martha Stewart video were to have simple syrup on hand to stir into the fondant or put it back on the heat when it got too thick. 

 

 

The main caveat I have when it comes to making petits fours is that it's NOT a neat and tidy process.  The poured fondant can be very finicky to work with and downright messy.  It took me a while to get a feel for what was the best consistency for the fondant and even more time trying to figure out the best set up.  In the end I'm happy with my first attempt at petits fours.  I don't have the time to make them often so I'll save it for special occasions. 

 

Packaging Details:

4" x 4" x 2" clear plastic boxes

4" x 4" x 3/8" raised bottom box insert

3/8" grosgrain ribbon