Tangerine Pound Cake Petits Fours With Marzipan Peonies: Lessons Learned

Petits fours are not for the faint-hearted.  Like their come-hither distant cousin the macaron, the petit four bats her smooth-glazed eyelashes at you and, the next thing you know you are elbow deep in warm poured fondant and your own tears. That is, if you let them defeat you.  But you shouldn’t – they are extremely rewarding to make once you master some of the details.  It was really a pleasure to be able to put my heart and soul into these pretty little cakes for my cousin’s wedding this last spring.

The entire dessert display

Glamour shot just before delivery

I learned many important lessons during this project, so I thought I would share some of them here with you.  I highly recommend taking the time to do a practice batch of petits fours in advance if you are planning to bring some to a special event.  It takes the edge off when you can make some errors to learn (and eat) from along the way.

1. Choose your cake recipe wisely – it will need to be fairly sturdy in order to hold up to the slicing, filling, dipping etc. I recommend a nice, moist pound cake. (Be sure it is a tasty cake – you don’t want to put all this effort into making something that looks pretty but tastes mediocre. That’s just sad.)
2. Covering the top of your cake with marzipan or rolled fondant before cutting it into pieces will yield nice smooth tops after glazing/dipping.
3. If you are married to an engineer/architect who is patient and supportive enough to help you measure out and cut exact grid of petits fours from four seperate nine-inch square cakes, you are a lucky lady indeed.
4. Once your cake is filled and or covered and cut into petite bites, wrap them well and freeze them for at least four hours or overnight. This makes for stronger cake when it comes time to glaze.
5. When making your poured fondant, DO NOT let the temperature go over 110 F.  (Thanks, Andrea!) Once the sugar has been heated past that point, you cannot save your fondant and you will end up with gloppy, thick, ugly petits fours.  You have to dump the whole batch and start over. 
   
6. You can keep your poured fondant warm using a double boiler, and you can also add teaspoons of boiling water to keep the temperature and consistency good. (If using this method, you need to be sure that you don’t over dilute your fondant and end up with too much variation in the appearance of your final product.)
7. Have a plan for the final decoration up front, if possible.  I crafted one hundred coral-colored marzipan peonies a few days in advance so that I would be ready to place them on top when the dipped petits fours were just dry enough to be sticky. 
   
8. Be patient. You got this.

Bonus tip: when coloring and working with sticky marzipan, sterile medical gloves are your new best friends. 

Don't let this happen to you. Watch that poured fondant temperature!

“Hey – what’s up with that weird 'S' after petits in petits fours?”

Just like the proper French word for everyone’s favorite almond + meringue sandwich cookie is macaron (not macaroon), the proper French words for these little bite-sized morsels are petits fours. The adjective in French must agree in both gender and number, and because the fours are plural, the 'S' is added onto petit. As for why these pretty little cakes are considered masculine, I couldn’t say . . . We have adopted the words into the English language at this point, and I think you will find them called petit fours in places online and elsewhere, so I wouldn’t clutch my pearls if I saw them written out that way.  I just prefer going with the original name. 

- Jenn

Happy Birthday to Me

This summer, I hit a milestone. Or rather, a milestone hit me. I don’t know how it happened so fast, but here I am at that age that I always considered to be “old.” (Otherwise known as the age-that-must-not-be-named.) It’s all relative, of course, and in many ways I am healthier and happier than I have ever been, however, it’s still a little shocking to reach what I consider to be my parents’ age. (And seriously, you couldn’t pay me to be twenty again – ugh!)  

Instead of engaging in some quiet introspection to reflect on my past and to set goals for my future, I headed into the kitchen to make myself a birthday cake. Since this is the second year in a row that I have made myself a cake for my birthday, I think I can call it a tradition. (Established 2012!) This is also the second time that I have made the Pistachio Petit Four Cake that I had long admired at Smitten Kitchen, and I think I was able to improve on my marzipan flower design this year. 

Glamour shot on great-grandma's cake stand

Yes, these marzipan mums were a labor of love

Maybe next year, I will attempt something more original as the topper, but I do feel like the glistening dark chocolate ganache calls for the fussiness of the girlie pink flowers on top. What do you think?

Last year's cake for reference

 - Jenn

Cakes of Seasons Past

During the long blog silence between the posts we made last winter and the new posts written last week, Jenny and I were involved in many projects that we never wrote about here. I thought it might be nice to do a quick catch-up on a couple of my personal highlights.

Two for Two Cake and Cupcakes
My Godson's birthday is in April – which means somewhat unpredictable weather in San Diego. Ya, go ahead and mock me, "Oh, boo hoo! Is it not perfectly sunny and 75 degrees every day of the year?" Here's the thing though: the weather in April might be beautiful and perfect for a birthday party in the park…or it might be rainy with winds that will blow your streamers to smithereens! So what do you do? Plan for the park and hope for the best? Plan to have a bunch of kids running around your house with that extra excited energy that a rainy day incites? I think I know what I would choose. So, as you may have ascertained, my Godson's party was planned for a small group in the park, but ended up being rerouted into a dinner party of five adults and one birthday boy. In other words, I made way too much cake. Better too much than too little!

Chocolate cake and vanilla cupcakes - everybody wins!

The Dog Cake
My niece requested a dog cake for her 9th birthday and sent me some examples of cakes she liked. I was immediately intimidated because as much as I am game for trying, I'm not a cake sculptor. I didn't want to disappoint my niece,  so I set about trying to create an achievable dog cake design. I ended up basing my cake off a black and white Pokey Little Puppy cake design and I used the blue and white color scheme from one of the cake photos my niece sent to me. I made a test cake the weekend before, to make sure that I could pull it off and that I wouldn't have to place a emergency cake order. When I made the final cake the next weekend, it looked even better.

Fondant Galore

The kids seemed to like it, even if they found out the hard way that fondant is best enjoyed in small quantities.

Dog butt!

- Jenn

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

I've been hearing a lot of talk about the U.S. birthrate being down, but you would never know it based on my friends and family. Lots of new babies have been born around here lately - to friends and family alike.

To celebrate the latest baby girl, I made some playful sugar and spice cookies. I wanted to do something fun that I could manage on a weeknight.

The "golden-brown" edges on the lollipops are just my oven's way of saying, "Gotcha!"

The spice component consisted of chai tea cookies with buttercream icing. I omitted the crystallized ginger and instead used sanding sugar as a decorative center for my cut-out flowers. These cookies are very crispy and with the buttercream icing they become truly addictive. You have been warned.

For the sugar, I made a basic sugar cookie recipe and then divided it up into three equal parts, coloring each with white, pink, and purple food coloring. I couldn't begin to detail the process anywhere near as well as SweetSugarBelle does, so please check out her post for more details on how to twist the dough into these cookie lollipops.

The results were tasty, fun and not as much work as you might think. What a rare treat!

 - Jenn

Welcome, Baby Jack!

If anyone is actually still checking this blog, I will be very impressed by their dedication. As it turns out, Jenny and I are not as active at blogging as we would like to think we might be. She has a pretty good excuse though, what with having a newborn and all. I have no such excuse.

The good news is: we haven't stopped baking. It's the bakiest (I just made up a word!) time of year again, so maybe we will find the time to share some of our creations over the next few weeks.

To follow-up on my nonchalant mention above that Jenny had a baby, I should mention that she's doing great. Jack is a quite the cute little man and both Jenny and her husband are enjoying the newest member of the family. Rumor has it that Grendel is thrilled to finally have a brother!

To welcome Jack home from the hospital, I baked these sugar cookies using the Fred Letterpress cookie cutters. They took a little figuring out, but it was pretty simple once I got the hang of it. Although, there's nothing like baking sugar cookies during a 90 degree October heatwave to make you wonder whether you have lost your mind. Totally worth it though.

We are so glad you are here, Jack! Congrats to Jenny and John!

- Jenn

Oatmeal Cookies Are Practically Health Food

Since we are all doing our best to try to be a little less decadent in these first few weeks of the New Year, I thought I would share a recipe that is at least pretending to be a little bit healthy. Bonus points if you use some sort of wheat flour. Adding chocolate chips will trick kids into liking them, as well.

Those aren't raisins!

Recipe Adapted from Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Recipe at joyofbaking.com.
 
Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies:

• 1 cup (226 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 cup (210 grams) light or dark brown sugar
• 1/3 cup (65 grams) granulated white sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups (195 grams) all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3 cups (260 grams) old-fashioned rolled oats
• 1 cup (140 grams) chocolate chips 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C) with oven rack in the center of the oven. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. 

In the bowl of your electric mixer (or with a hand mixer), beat the butter and sugars until creamy and smooth (about 2 - 3 minutes). Add the eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Beat in the vanilla extract. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, and ground cinnamon. Add the flour mixture to the creamed mixture and beat until incorporated. Stir in the rolled oats and chocolate chips.

For large cookies, use a generous 1/4 cup of batter (I like to use an ice cream scoop) and place six cookies on each baking sheet. Flatten the cookies slightly so they are about 1/2 inch (1.25 cm) thick. Bake the cookies for about 14 - 18 minutes rotating the cookie sheets halfway through the baking time. The cookies are done when golden brown around the edges but still a little soft in the centers. (The longer the cookies bake the more crispy they will be.) Remove from oven and let the cookies cool a few minutes on the baking sheet before transferring them to a wire rack to finish cooling. These cookies will keep several days at room temperature.

Makes about 18 large cookies.

Smashed cookies ready for baking

 Enjoy!


- Jenn

Good bye 2011, hello Candied Jalapeños!

Well another year has passed us by, I have had the last 8 days off and have failed to blog.  Please note, I have ONLY failed to blog, not failed to cook.  My pantry has been cleaned and rearranged, I have been obsesses with Indian cooking all week. Side note: anyone need a bag of leftover Curry leaves?  Not sure I can use the all up in addition to the 2 bags I already have in the freezer.

Anyway, I have also been obsessed with finding new jalapeño recipes and I have found it:

Candied Jalapeños- makes about 8-9 half pints

4 pounds fresh, firm, jalapeño peppers
3 cups apple cider vinegar
8 cups white granulated sugar
1 teaspoon turmeric
2 teaspoons celery seed
12 cloves of garlic minced very fine
2 teaspoons ground cayenne pepper or Hot paprika

Step 1: For the love of god, put on gloves

Step 2: Slice the jalapeños, I used a mandolin to get really thin slices

Step 3:  Make the syrup

In a large pot, bring cider vinegar, white sugar, turmeric, celery seed, minced garlic and cayenne pepper or paprika to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the pepper slices and once the mixture starts boiling again simmer for about 4 minutes.

Step 4: Remove the peppers with a slotted spoon and add to sterilized half pint jars

Step 5: Bring the syrup to a rolling boil and boil for 6 minutes.  After 6 minutes, fill the jars up within a 1/4" to the top.  Seal with lids and process in a water bath for 10 minutes.  After the 10 minute process, remove and let cool for 24 hours.

Now you may be asking yourself, " Wherre is the finished product?"  Well, Jenn and I like to refer to that as the money shot, and well, they aren't ready yet.  They need to sit for about 2 weeks before you crack open the first jar and taste the magic.  Here's hoping I can wait the 2 weeks.

-Jenny