Monday, March 12, 2007

Wonderland Worthy Petit Fours


Wonderland Worthy Petit Fours, originally uploaded by razzieswirl.

I will be serving these at the party for sure. They're good. Not mindblowing but they will do. The cake is dense, moist and has a perfect crumb (it doesn't fall apart when I cut it in three parts).

There's really not much to say about them, they're fairly straight forward. I plan to try a genoise cake as well, but I'm really just looking for something easy peasy to make so I can whip it together and not think about it too much. Genoise is a little more complicated than a "whip it together" recipe. For now I'm just very pleased with this recipe, it works great for petit fours. The pan I baked them it was very deep so they're so tall they lean a little bit, which I love because it makes them look very whimsical yet kind of zany (much like the mad hatter himself).

Recipe:

Ingredients:

1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese
1 1/2 cups butter
3 cups white sugar
6 eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (160 degrees C) grease and flour a 10 inch tube pan.
2. In a large bowl, cream butter and cream cheese until smooth.
3. Add sugar gradually and beat until fluffy.
4. Add eggs two at a time, beating well with each addition.
5. Add the flour all at once and mix in.
7. Add vanilla.
8. Pour into a 10 inch tube pan (I used my cheesecake mold).
9. Bake at 325 degrees F (160 degrees C) for 1 hour and 20 minutes. Check for doneness at 1 hour. A toothpick inserted into center of cake will come out clean.

To make petit fours:

Raspberry Filling:

Ingredients:

1/2 cup frozen or fresh raspberrys
2 TBS granulated sugar
1 TBS champagne or sweet white wine

Directions:

1. Combine all the ingredients in a small pot over medium heat.
2. Allow mixture to cook until raspberries are reduced, broken down and the most of the liquid has evaporated (appx. 5 minutes).

I also used a good orange marmalade (because it is used in Alice in Wonderland), that was store bought. So no recipe for that.

White Chocolate "Ganache"

1 bag of white chocolate (I used Ghirardelli)
1/4 cup of cream

1. Melt the chocolate and cream together over medium/low heat in small saucepan. You can adjust the cream depending on how runny/firm you want your chocolate to be, but you want it smooth enough to drizzle.

Assemblage of the Petit Cakes:

1. Remove cooled pound cake from modl/pan.
2. I had to trim the corners of my cake because it was round. Cut cake into one inch squares.
3. Cut each square in the middle once (or twice, depending on the height of your cake/depth of the pan).
4. Spread some of either filling onto middles of cake and reassemble, laying out onto wax/parchment paper.
5. Drizzle with the White Chocolate ganache.

Viola!

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