Did anyone else feel like February zoomed by? In looking back at what I made for the past month, I realized there was an overwhelming majority of Asian dishes represented, so I am working on diversifying my menu a bit. For this week, I went French with petit fours which are bite-sized desserts (typically cakes) or appetizers served at tea time or special occasions. My other main reason for choosing this dish is because it has the word “four” in it which actually translates to “oven,” but I reference it as the number in the spirit of Leap Day earlier this week.
Making the Dish
I always trust Preppy Kitchen when it comes to dessert recipes – you can check out his Petit Fours recipe that I followed. For this recipe, you make 3 components: the fluffy cake, the vanilla buttercream, and the white chocolate coating. To create these mini rectangular layered cakes, you split the cake in half, spread one side with the buttercream, and the other with jam. He uses raspberry jam, but my HEB curbside order had to replace mine with blackberry jam so that is what I ended up using. In his notes, he mentions that you can swap this out with other jams, lemon curd, marzipan, or caramel so I also tried out lemon curd and orange marmalade that I had on hand. I would love to try these with an Asian twist by pairing black sesame buttercream with yuzu curd or coconut buttercream with ube jam. Finally, the cake is enrobed in a white chocolate coating which forms its signature elegant, pearlescent appearance.
Not going to lie, this dish was very time consuming. The cake itself takes a bit, never mind the fact that you need to ensure that many of the ingredients are at room temperature. Since I am like most home chefs who own only one stand mixer and bowl for it, I had to wash out the mixer bowl to use for the buttercream (this can be remedied by making the cake or buttercream in advance, but I was too lazy to have the foresight to do so). There were also many time-sensitive components such as freezing the cake before cutting and then putting back in the freezer to chill again before covering in the white chocolate which in itself needs to be used quickly before it hardens. I felt like a headless chicken with all the running around, making the components, assembling and freezing the cake, and washing dishes and wiping counters as I went (although, this happens regardless of the recipe). The decorating part was a lot of fun though!
Eating the Dish
I am very glad that these petit fours are as small as they are because wow, they were sweet! The cake with its buttercream and jam were pretty sweet on its own, but the white chocolate coating really amped it up. I am not the biggest fan of white chocolate to begin with because of its sweetness, so I think I would use milk or dark chocolate and less sugar for the buttercream if I were to make it again. That being said, I loved re-purposing the white chocolate for decoration by coloring it, something you can’t really do with milk or dark chocolate. I did also find that using blackberry jam meant chewing on seeds, so I am excited to see how the lemon curd and marmalade ones turn out (I currently have a bunch of frozen filled cakes in the freezer!).
Summary
I enjoyed the challenge of making a French dessert, especially one as delicate and beautiful as petit fours. I might only make these again for a very special occasion like a tea party or bridal shower. Luckily, this recipe makes quite a few mini cakes and freezes well.