Parisian Petite Fours

These little beasts are not the easiest thing to do unless you have some serious kid-free time to work with them. My oldest daughter (6-years-old) helped out with a few of the stages, but I think I'll wait and perfect these down the road. That being said, there is quite a bit of potential here for really nice little gifts or party snacks. I used them as a part of the Valentines gift boxes that I made this year.

I felt it would be best to use a sturdy, dense white/yellow cake that would hold up well to the cutting, filling and glazing. I chose my fail-safe "Traditional wedding cake" recipe. I iced them with Royal Icing. (Both of these recipes are explained in detail under their own posts)

Wedding Cake:
1 1/2 cups butter - softened
2 1/2 cups granulated sugar
5 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
3/4 tsp almond extract (if you don't like this flavor just double your vanilla and omit this)
3 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup milk

Preheat your oven to 350 F. Cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well. Add the dry ingredients and the milk alternately. Beat for 3 minutes on high.

Baking time will vary according to the size and shape of pan that you're using. For the Petite Fours I split the batter between 2 9"x13" rectangular cake pans. The bake time was about 22 minutes each in my oven, just check them with a tooth-pick for done-ness.

Let them cool COMPLETELY so that they don't break when you cut them. You will want them as square as possible, so I trimmed off the edges before I made my Fours.

Next, cut them into small squares (I would go even smaller than this if I did it again) and slice each square into 2 layers.

Spread a thin layer of jam (I used strawberry) in the middle and re-stack them.

To cover them I used a standard Royal Icing

Royal Icing:
1 pound confectioners sugar
5 tbsp. Meringue powder
1/3 cup water

Beat together, add more water 1 tsp. at a time until you reach the desired consistency.

I set about 3/4 of a cup aside for decorating and tinted the rest pink with a few drops of red liquid food coloring.

Placing the cakes on a fork over the bowl of icing, I drizzled it over them until they were coated. You'll want to brush off as many crumbs as possible before you do this, I still had a few in the icing by the end.

Next I let them set on parchment paper and took the white royal icing and poured it into an icing bag with my smallest lettering tip (the tiny little plain round one) and piped designs onto the tops.