Petit Fours - Beautiful Little Cakes

I could not wait to make petit four glaces! They are just the most beautiful desserts, ever. When I moved out to San Francisco (the first time), my friend Jen sent me a box from Neiman Marcus. I never thought that I could create the confections, but I proved myself wrong...





The only thing I would do differently with these is thin out the fondant more.

To construct these lovely little cakes, you need to make an almond sponge, called a joconde in a half sheet pan. Baking time is only about 10 minutes because it's so thin. After the cake is cooled, cut it into thirds. Then, using the jam of your choice, melt and strain, and spread jam over each layer and put one layer over the other. You also need to make and roll out the marzipan and place it over the top layer and cut into circles or squares and trim the sides.

After that, you should place the petit fours on a cake rack and pour the fondant (not the same thing as what is on wedding cakes, this is pronounced fond-ahnt) over the petit fours to cover completely, as what Jennifer is doing. Traditionally petit fours are pastel colors, so I colored mine a light yellow.



I also made chocolate filigree flowers to place atop each petit four.