Petit Fours

These petit fours were fun to make, though I certainly don't recommend making them from start to finish in one day as I did--well, I did bake the pound cake the night before I finished them, but that was by far the easier part of making these sweet little treats. Making the gum paste flowers alone took nearly two hours. The icing was simple to make, but incredibly messy! These are so cute though so they are well worth the time put into them. I'd definitely save them for special occasions, however. Tea party anyone?

I used this vanilla pound cake recipe which is very much your traditional pound cake--in one word: dense. But delicious nonetheless. I sliced the pound cake into 1-inch thick slices and used a 1 1/2-inch round cutter to make little petit fours. I kept them simple and iced them with this petit four icing which is essentially a very, very thick glaze. Instead of the clear vanilla extract (I don't have any) and almond extract (which I'm not a big fan of) called for in the recipe, I used 1/2 teaspoon of orange extract which gave a very pleasant hint of citrus flavor. When I make these again, I'd like to try using a cream cheese pound cake, splitting the layers of the cake and filling them with thin layers of buttercream and/or fruit curd for some added flavor and texture. I was able to get 20 petit fours out of one pound cake loaf. I think these would be even cuter on a slightly smaller scale. I made due and used the smallest round cutter I had. The resulting petit fours are darling little 2-3 bite treats. Perfect for nibbling on between sips of tea.