Recipe Sunday: Valentine’s Day Petits Fours (Part 1).

Rather than upset myself by staying up extra late to complete a project that would turn out much better if I exercised a little patience and spread it out over two days, I’ve decided to break this Recipe Sunday into two parts. Tonight, is the prep. Also, this is a little different from previous Recipe Sundays. It does include recipes, however, it’s more of a project tutorial, rather than a lesson in baking. I’m not going to provide a recipe for the cake itself, mainly because these can be made with any flavor of cake you choose, but I recommend something basic – vanilla, chocolate, red velvet…something that blends well with others. There are three other components as well:

Strawberry Jam (Recipe previously posted here)

Cream Cheese Icing (Recipe included below)

Poured Fondant (Recipe included in Part 2)

And away we go….

Valentine’s Day Petits Fours (Part 1).

First, make your cake of choice. Bake it in a well-greased half sheet tray – you wont have to cut the layers in half mulitple times if you do it this way. Next, prepare your….

Cream Cheese Icing.

What you’ll need:

1 8oz package cream cheese (softened)

1 stick (1/2 cup) butter (softened)

4 cups confectioners sugar

1 tsp vanilla

What you’ll do:

Cream together the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla. Add the confectioners sugar one cup at a time, mixing well between each addition.

Next, prepare your Strawberry Jam. Let it cool completely.

While that’s cooling, you can prep your cake. Cut cake into small squares, about an 1″ in size.

hip to be square.

Cut the squares in half, lining up the tops and bottoms.

divide and conquer.

Drop a small amount of strawberry jam on each “bottom.”

Radar about to be “jammed.”

Pipe some cream cheese icing on top of the jam.

top that.

Put the corresponding tops back on, cover the entire sheet with plastic wrap, and put them in the fridge.

put it back on!

Go to bed.

To be continued…..