petits fours

Petit four is derived from the French meaning small oven. These delicious goodies are generally served at the end of a meal and are various in type, including biscuits, mini tarts, macarons, small cakes, layered slices, mini éclairs and so much more. I attempted two iced cake petits fours, more correctly known as petits fours glacés. 

One of these was a two-layered brown butter pound cake with buttercream in between and a coating of chocolate glaze. The original recipe uses a layer of ice cream between the two cake layers, which got me super excited, but after reading the blog it seemed more of a hassle than anything else (in the way of time and the ice cream melting when trying to work with it), so I went the easy way and used buttercream instead.

The other one I made was a three-layered cream cheese pound cake with strawberry jam in between and poured fondant over the top. I’d recommend actually measuring out the jam because if you use too little (like I did) you can’t see it very well between the layers. Whilst the poured fondant was easy enough to make, it was difficult to use to coat the small cakes. It would basically harden before it had spread evenly on top and around the cake. Thinning down the mixture with water, continually reheating it and working super fast helped to some degree, but I eventually gave up having only iced about half the cakes. Next time I think I’m just going to make the cream cheese pound cake and eat it by itself – it’s a really good cake! You can find the recipe here, and if you want step-by-step photos, I’d recommend going here.

Overall, a lot more effort when into making these petits fours than I had originally thought. Icing them was definitely the hardest and most frustrating part, but I’m sure would get easier with practice. But if you persevere, these petits fours are delicious, cute and can be decorated in so many ways to suit any occasion.

xx