Recipe (two days after) Sunday: Valentine’s Day Petits Fours (Part 2)

Happy Valentine’s Day!

The Petits Fours are done, and have been shared with the world (and by world, i mean my office) on this fine love-commemorating holiday. When we last saw them, the petits fours were assembled, and chillin’ like Bob Dylan. Next step – they get iced with poured fondant. Here’s the recipe.

Poured Fondant.

What you’ll need:

3 cups confectioners’ sugar

1/4 cup water

1 TBSP glucose or light corn syrup

1/2 tsp vanilla

2 drops red food coloring (to make it pink)

What you’ll do:

In a saucepan, heat the confectioners sugar, water, and corn syrup, stirring constantly until smooth. Add the vanilla, and stir until its thin enough to pour, but coats the back of the spoon.

Place the petits fours on a wire rack, above a sheet tray (to catch the run-off, which can be reheated and reused). Using a ladle, pour fondant over top of the petits fours, one at a time, making sure to completely cover all the sides. You will most likely need to reheat the fondant at some point. I had to, a couple of times.

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…..

Cut the cake.

I can’t say no to cake. It’s just not something I do. Even when I know I don’t want to eat a whole piece. I’ll take it anyway, and either eat it and feel yucky, or let it sit until I eventually take a couple tastes and then begrudgingly throw the half-eaten remains in the garbage (have I mentioned that I absolutely despise wastefulness?). So what’s a cake-loving-recycling-obsessed bakestress to do?  The answer is easy, if you take it logically – there must be 50 ways to leave your lover. And by lover, I mean big ol’ piece of cake. 

Just cut it.

one cake, many varieties.

 That’s right, make one big sheet cake, ice it, then cut into however many pieces you desire. In my case, i made an apple juice cake – again my inner recycler was trying to find uses for things I already had that would soon go bad if not used, and iced it with cream cheese icing. I popped into the fridge for about 20 minutes so the icing would set, then cut it up, and topped the pieces with various decorative and tasty extras, and Voila! We’ve got cake bites.

cake bite: the poor man's petit four.