Petit Fours

In the past, many of you have asked if I make my own petit fours and up until Monday the answer would have been “no”. Now I can confidently say “yes” and I figured y’all might want to make your own too. I’ve always been a fan of petit fours so long as they’re not covered in fondant, which in my humble opinion tastes like molding clay. There’s a local bakery that makes the most divine petit fours, perhaps you’ve seen them here before for birthdays, baby showers, and baptisms. I’m quite aware that most of y’all don’t live here and what a shame that you can’t run to the bakery and pick up a dozen {or two}. They melt in your mouth and they are so much better than any cupcake on the planet. Don’t get me wrong, I love a cupcake, I just have a hard time eating them; you get all the icing first and by the time you get to the bottom you’re out of icing. Not the case with these.

Here’s what I started with {Justin tried to get me to follow the “instrucciones en espanol”}:

It can be baked in a 9×13 cake pan or a jelly roll pan {16 x 12 x 1}… but the results will vary by pan. The jelly roll pan yields about 30 short and rectangular petit fours.

Using a 9 x 13 cake pan will yield about 24 tall & square but potentially unlevel {which is apparently not a word} petit fours.

But nothing a little serrated knife can’t even out.

So the option is yours: shorter & rectangular or taller & square. Do you want to hear my opinion on the two choices? Ok, good. The short and rectangular bake faster and are easier to coat as the icing doesn’t have as far to run down the short sides {you’ll see} but the square ones sure are pretty! So… the decision is yours to make.

I’m going to show you the process with the 9 x 13. After the cake cooled completely I cut an inch off around the edges.

After I cut the cake into squares and leveled {as pictured above} I placed the cake squares on a lovely little cooling rack and placed freezer paper below with the plastic-coated side up.

Then I made the icing.

The icing is a mixture of powdered sugar, heavy cream, milk, and clear vanilla extract. I also tried it with powdered sugar, whole milk, and clear vanilla and it worked great. The cream makes the frosting a little more opaque. You will want to alternate adding the powdered sugar and milk in the mixing bowl and add the vanilla towards the end. You’re looking for this consistency…

I call it coatable yet drippy. If you’re not sure if your consistency is good just try it on one petit four, it should run off the spatula in sheets like this.

If you are a perfectionist this is not a recipe for you. It is merely impossible to cover the entire petit four. You can get close but total coverage is not easily attained.

Do not attempt to ice these if you don’t have a cooling rack for the icing to run through, otherwise you will have a giant mess. Occasionally I would scrape the icing off the paper and pour it back over the petit fours. Be prepared to waste a lot of icing and be okay with that. Scraping the paper and pouring the wasted icing back over is helpful but really a lot of icing gets dribbled down… in fact, probably half or more.

Once they are dry {about 30+ minutes} you can decorate them. Are you a cake decorator? I am not… I tried so many fun little decorations and they looked more like a 4-year old did it. I stuck to suns and hearts they’re more my caliber. While I decorated the petit fours Morgan decorated graham crackers.

If you’re going to decorate the petit fours I would use a butter cream frosting… but after all that work you can also use a can of white frosting from the baking aisle and tint it with food coloring.

These are great for birthday parties {especially for kids!}, bridal and baby showers… or for a summer day. I made 4 dozen on Monday and took them to the Rescue Mission with me, along with ALL OF THIS STUFF that many kind readers contributed, thank you, thank you, thank you! Y’all are the best!

One last thing, if your husband happens to come home while you’re making these he will more than likely eat one that isn’t dry, dribble icing across the kitchen before he finds himself over the kitchen sink. After he inhales it he will sing your praises, which makes cleaning up after him much easier.

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