Petits Fours

A friend of mine needed some petits fours for a wedding, and asked me if I could do them.  I had not actually made petits fours before, but I knew how (theoretically) from my baking books.  So, I made up a test batch and brought them to her for judgement!

Petits fours are made with multiple thin layers of white or vanilla sponge cake, with jam between the layers, and are usually topped with a thin coating or marzipan, and then covered with poured fondant, which is mixture of corn syrup and powdered sugar, which you heat over a double boiler until it's a thin enough consistency to spoon over the little cakes.  When it cools, it hardens into a crust.

I added little gumpaste butterflies for extra fun.  The problem with poured fondant, is, in my opinion, it tastes bad.  It's corn syrup and powdered sugar - it's insanely sweet, and I felt that it overwhelmed the flavor of the cake and filling inside.  One of the main things that I don't like in the cake industry is sacrificing flavor for looks, so if I can make something taste better, I will always choose that route.

So, what I chose to do with the rest of the petits fours I made, was to dip them in tempered white chocolate.  I dyed it a light blue, to keep with the decoration theme I had done with the poured fondant.  These were very delicious.  I use a high quality white chocolate, and the flavor is really delicious.  If you think you don't like white chocolate, you have probably never had good quality - in fact, you may have never eaten real white chocolate at all.  The majority of the "white chocolate" sold in stores is not actually white chocolate.  If you look on the packages, they do not actually say "chocolate" anywhere on them - which means they are not made with cocoa butter.  In any case, get your hands on some real white chocolate and give it a try.  The mild flavor of the white chocolate went very well with the cake and the raspberry jam - a vast improvement over the poured fondant.