Photo By Ellen Easton©
- All Rights Reserved. I adapted this recipe by Ellen Easton.
Your tea party
for one or many always has room for a pretty petit four cakes. The cake
and filling can be of any variety of your preference.
Check out more of Ellen Easton's
Tea Travels™
articles and recipes.
Learn about the
History of English High Tea and more delicious
Afternoon Tea and High Tea Recipes.
Petit Four Cake
Recipe Type:
Cake,
Afternoon Tea & High Tea
Yields: serves many
Prep time: 30 min
Ingredients:
1 store-bought
Pound Cake or Sponge Cake (any flavored pound or sponge cake of your choice)*
Filling (Nutella, fruit preserves, lemon curd, etc. of your choice)
Buttercream Icing (see recipe below)
* If desired, you may make your own cakes for
this recipe. You want a cake that is not too light and crumbly, but
one that will hold up under the slicing and decorations that comes next.
Preparation:
Either refrigerate or freeze the cake (once chilled or frozen, the cake can be easily cut into different
shapes).
Prepare Buttercream Icing; set aside.
Use a long serrated knife, slice the cold cake in half
or layers (depending on the size of your cake).
You can measure the sides and mark them with toothpicks to help guide
the knife; gently saw your way through. Cover cake layers with plastic
wrap until you're ready to assemble them. Spread the filling (of your
choice) between the layers. Place the top layer over the top of the
filling.
Remove
any crumbs from your work area.
Position the petit fours 2 inches apart on a thin mesh wire cake rack
suspended over a baking pan (to catch drips).
Once your cake layers are filled, the simplest decorating
technique for petits fours is to glaze or frost the top of the whole cake, and
then cut it into shapes (squares, rectangles,
rounds, or triangles, as desired). Each individual Petit Four cakes are usually about 1-inch
square. With a warmed
flat knife, spread the prepared Buttercream Icing over the top and
sides of each individual Petit Four and decorate as desired. Decorate the top of your petit four cakes with sprinkles, dragees, flaked coconut,
edible flowers, or a design of whimsy.
Allow frosted cakes to sit until they are dry, then
remove the cakes from the rack, trimming any excess frosting away from
the bottoms with a sharp knife.
Once
your cakes are baked and cooled, they can be wrapped well and frozen
for up to one month. Thaw the wrapped cakes at room temperature.
Buttercream Icing
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature*
1/4 cup milk, room temperature
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 tablespoons of rose water or rose extract
1 pound box powdered (confectioners) sugar
Pastel food coloring (to color icing)
*
Use vegetable
shortening when pure white icing is needed.
Preparation:
In a large mixing
bowl, combine butter, milk, vanilla extract, rose water or rose
extract, and powdered sugar; and mix at a low speed until smooth.
NOTE: If stiffer icing is needed or the weather is very warm, add a
little extra sugar.
To create pastel colors, divide icing into a separate bowls for each
desired color. Using a toothpick, add one drop of color at a time
and mix until desired color is reached.
Chocolate Buttercream Icing: To create a chocolate icing, add 2
tablespoons of dark cocoa to the above recipe.
