The rest of Petit Fours

I forgot my camera at school over the weekend, so this is many days worth of petit fours in one post. First, the executive Pastry Chef at the Metropolitan Museum of Art came and taught us for a day- here's what he had us make:

Florentine Cookies

Nougat

Chocolate Friands- little brownie-like things with a chocolate glaze

Russian Tea Cakes

Our next plating had lots of fun things on it, including the classic "petit fours" that I always got as a little kid in the bakery in our town



The whole tray

Almond cake with a Buttercream mound, covered with fondant. Behind it is squares of almond cake sandwiched with raspberry buttercream, covered with coconut buttercream, and glazed with fondant. Next to it are swirl cookies- chocolate and normal Pate Sable rolled in a swirl shape.

Almond cake with raspberry, coconut, and chocolate buttercream and Pate a Glace

From the left, caramel mou, or fancy tootsie rolls, lemon cookies sandwiched with raspberry jam, dipped in chocolate glaze, and checkerboard cookies.

Finally, we had our test today! As previously said, we invented our own petit four trays, following a theme decided upon with our partners. Our theme was circus/carnival, and we each came up with four different petit fours. I was worried about time, but everything came out more or less as planned. I took many, many pictures.


The entire tray



My side of the tray- starting at the front, we have puff pastry "vols a vents" filled with white chocolate ganache and lemon curd. These were intended to represent lemonade. Next, we have "ice cream cones" which were Hippen, or tuille-like cookies, molded to look like cones, and filled with piped white and dark chocolate ganache, topped with a marzipan cherry. Then there are wedges of spiced peanut caramels, covered with chocolate glaze, and topped with a mini spiced peanut butter popcorn ball. These represented caramel popcorn and roasted peanuts. Finally, are the swans, in honor of the "tunnel of love" ride. They were filled with raspberry whipped cream, stabilized with cocoa butter.

This was Amy's side. She made profiteroles and filled them with apples flambeed with calvados and folded into creme fraiche, then dipped those in caramel and pistachios to represent caramel apples. She also made swirl cookies, which you probably recognize from earlier. Then she made "hotdogs" with Langues du Chat, milano-like cookies, and filled them with Mexican hot chocolate Gianduja ganache, and used raspberry jam and lemon curd for ketchup and mustard. Lastly, she made maple banana Mille Feuille, using maple white chocolate ganache as the filling, with a bruleed banana on top. Yum!
I don't know how we did yet, but we had a lot of fun coming up with our tray.