petits fours

I've had an urge to make my own petites fours. Why? I keep seeing them for sale on gilt taste, and I can't help but think that while those may be very tasty, I could do that. So I did a little googling, and voila!

I have to say, I'm very pleased. I started with the blog post from bakerella on pound cake and petites fours. Other articles I read said to use a sponge cake, but I think the pound cake was brilliant- it's a very tasty cake in and of itself, and it held up nicely to the cutting. I didn't have any cream cheese so I used a tried-and-true pound cake recipe I had on hand:

Pound cake:
2 3/4 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butter
2 c granulated sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Cream butter and sugar until smooth, beat in eggs one at a time and add vanilla. Slowly beat in flour mixture.

Normally this gets baked in a 10-in bundt pan for over an hour @ 325F. This time I put it in a jelly-roll pan and baked it for about 25 min @ 325F.

I also don't remember where I got this recipe from, or I would give credit where it's due. Normally I add 2 cups of blueberries (fresh or frozen) and some chocolate chips, if I'm feeling like it. And, I don't know how this happened, but last night I completely ran out of granulated sugar. Completely. I made up the difference with brown sugar, it was totally fine. And honestly, probably more flavorful than with white sugar.

Cool the cake, and then cut into 8 sections- I'm rather bad at cutting them into equal-sized portions, but it was ok. Then slice each section in half horizontally. There are some nice pictures on the bakerella blog. She said to apply a small amount of syrup to each piece- I didn't have a spray bottle so I tried just using a spoon. Way, way too much simple syrup. The cake started to fall apart as the liquid soaked through, after I added layers of jam and stacked it. So I skipped the syrup and just layered jam and cake. I used some blueberry rhubarb jam that I made over the summer. I also skipped the marzipan because I didn't have it and also I don't really like it that much.

The jam filling.

I decided to use a chocolate glaze instead of a fondant glaze. 1) because I love chocolate and 2) because I find fondant to be cloyingly sweet. I used a recipe from allrecipes for a shiny chocolate glaze. I doubled the recipe because I didn't want to run out. I think that was for the best, though I probably had a good cup or so of glaze left over. Still trying to decide what to do with that. I melted this over a pot of water on the stove rather than in the microwave, so that I could keep it warm over the water. I just turned off the heat and left the bowl on top of the pot.

I have no photos of the glazing process, because I only have two hands. I ended up with chocolate everywhere, possibly in my hair. But basically, I put the cake piece on a fork, and used a spoon to coat the cake with the glaze. It's pretty thin, making it super easy to pour over while it's hot. I then placed it on the silpat to cool. And then, after all of the cakes were coated, I melted some white chocolate, added some food coloring, and drizzled. :D I need to find a better method to drizzle chocolate (I am currently just using a fork dipped into the chocolate) because it sometimes results in globs of chocolate. And again, chocolate all over the kitchen.

So pretty!