(celebratory music) - It's a boy!
It's a girl!
It's a petit four!
(confetti guns pop) (laughter)
(cheery music) Welcome back to Smart Cookie!
I'm your host, Elise,
and we're about to make some petit fours.
Petit fours are little, bite-sized glazed cakes
and they are served on every menu
at any shower you have ever gone to.
Bridal showers, wedding showers, baby showers.
The version we're making now are
for a gender reveal baby shower,
but you could make these for any special occasion.
We're gonna say this fictional person
is having twins, and one of them is a girl
and one of them is a boy.
This is a fictional person because let me clarify,
I am not having a baby,
but if you are, I'm very excited for you.
Convenient products should be used
at your convenience, so we are starting
with a cake mix 'cause it makes things real easy.
This is actually a recipe for a traditional
white almond wedding cake, but I am kind of
bulking this up by adding extra flour and sugar,
so it's gonna make this a little bit more dense.
Cake mix, flour, sugar.
Gotta have salt in all of your baked goods.
This is a little bit of vegetable oil.
Gotta have some water.
That goes in there, and then we're gonna do
two different extracts.
We'll do vanilla and almond, like an almond wedding cake.
So I'm just gonna get this started
and then we'll add their eggs.
(mixer blends)
I'm missing an ingredient.
I knew I was missing something.
The missing ingredient is sour cream!
Alright, we're adding some sour cream which is
gonna give this a little bit more depth of flavor.
♪ Sour cream ♪
Great.
Mix it in.
Alright, this is four egg whites.
You use egg whites because it keeps
the color from changing to a yellow cake.
Kick it up a notch!
I'm just letting these mix in,
so you're doing this one at a time.
Okay, great, so now this is gonna go
for about two to four minutes.
You just want this to beat all the air out,
make sure all the ingredients are really well combined,
and then we're gonna transfer to our pans.
(mixer rhythmically beating)
It's the sprinkler.
So, these are eleven by seventeen
which is kind of a specific pan size.
They're a little bit longer and more narrow
than a half sheet pan which most people
have in their houses, so you'll wanna make sure
that you've got eleven by seventeen.
Alright, so, you're just gonna half this batter
between both of these pans.
They have been lined with parchment paper
and sprayed with baking spray.
So, we're just gonna eyeball it.
This is gonna make a thin layer of cake batter
in each one of these.
♪ We found these at Wally World ♪
hashtag not sponsored - could be!
So, now we're just gonna spread this
into a super thin layer.
I'm giving these a tap to try to get as much of
the air bubbles out as I can,
and also to help me even out all this batter.
(pan slams)
These are just gonna bake for fifteen minutes
at 325.
The tops of them are still gonna be bright white.
We're just looking for golden brown
right at the edges.
Here we go!
(doors close)
Smart Cookie fact of the day.
What are petit fours?
Petit fours are small, glazed cakes,
but the term actually means small oven,
so in the eighteenth century
ovens that were usually in the kitchens of noble people,
who could actually afford to have ovens,
they were very small, they were just
little stone cupboards, and they only
had two levels of heat: blazing hot or cooling down.
That was it, there was nothing in between,
So they would usually cook the mains meals
and all of their meats on the super hot, searing heat
in the oven, and as it was cooling down
there would be enough residual heat
to bake the little, tiny desserts
that be served with afternoon tea.
So, the term petit four literally means small oven.
Alright, so our cake layers baked for fifteen minutes,
and then we let them cool for a half hour.
I'm going to very gently
lift my cake.
One, two, three.
Alright.
Just gonna do a little cake repair.
Good enough.
That's what I say.
That's how I got all those good grades.
So, now we're gonna start filling this guy,
and because we're doing a gender reveal petit four
we have blueberry and we have raspberry,
and we're gonna do half the cake in each jelly flavor.
Now, you can make petit fours for all kinds
of different occasions, so feel free
to use whatever preserve you want.
You can dye your frosting certain colors.
Whatever floats your boat.
So, I'm using about a half a cup
on each side.
Okay!
Blueberry side.
♪ Petit fours ♪
Okay, we have our fillings on,
we've got half raspberry, half blueberry.
So, we've got our preserves down,
and now it's time to get some frosting on there.
So, instead of trying to frost over the top
of this jam and getting it all messy
I'm gonna frost the top of the other cake layer,
and then we're gonna flop it over on top.
We're just gonna make this into a thin, even layer.
You can use whatever frosting you want,
so if you want chocolate you can do chocolate.
If you're not a cream cheese fan
shame on you.
Buttercream, live your life.
So, we've got an even, thin layer of cream cheese frosting.
One, two, and three.
I did it, kind of.
It's broke a little bit.
Again, it's fine, at the end of the day
everybody's eating cake.
Alright, so now I'm just gonna move this guy.
Make sure they're all lined up.
Uh-oh, blueberry finger.
(sighs)
All the scary parts of this are basically done now.
Everything else is
a piece of cake. (humorous percussive sting)
Okay.
So, now we're gonna use the rest of our can of frosting,
and we are gonna frost the top of this guy, too.
Alright, almost done.
I'm trying to be very gentle
because this cake is super tender.
So, now you're gonna take this to a fridge.
You can either freeze it for an hour,
or you could chill it overnight, up to you,
and then we'll come back and do the next step.
I'm just exiting the frame, exiting the frame.
♪ Petit four, take four, petit four, take four ♪
(scratchy cry)
That's what kind of baby we're having today.
It's a baby dinosaur. (laughs)
I'm gonna go get the cake out of the fridge over here.
Would you look at that?
It's all chilled.
Perfect!
Mmm, chilly. (voice shivers)
Just gonna slide it off the cookie sheet.
Magic.
You want this to be cold 'cause it's gonna
make it easier for you to cut the cubes
which is the part of this recipe that we are at.
Get yourself a ruler.
Okay, this is gonna be your best friend.
You could try to eyeball two by two cubes,
maybe you're better at geometry than I am,
but I'm really bad at it.
I'm going to measure this and they will
still not be even,
but I'm gonna try my best and that's what matters.
I'm measuring and making little marks in my frosting.
Eight,
ten,
twelve, two
and that's a four.
Okay, now, here's my trick with the ruler.
Your ruler's gonna get dirty because I make marks
all the way up the cake
with my ruler,
and that's how I try to keep things even.
Great, and then you get to eat some of that,
because (lips smack) don't let it go to waste.
We're gonna do the same thing on this side.
Two,
four,
six,
eight, ten.
Okay, here we go.
Now, you're just gonna cut this into cubes.
That's the other reason you want your cake to be cold,
'cause even when it's cold it's still a super tender cake,
so you're gonna try not to drag your knife
through it too much, but won't be able to help it.
We've got baking sheets (sheet bangs) oh, boy.
We've got baking sheets with wire racks inside of them.
I'm gonna get all of this stuff on the wire racks.
Then, they are gonna go away to chill
for a little bit longer while we get ready
to craft the frosting.
Okay, I'm gonna take this guy away
to go chill and then we're gonna make some poured fondant.
How fancy!
Alright, great, so our cake cubes are chilling
in the fridge which means now it is time
to make the poured fondant icing.
This is what really makes a petit four,
So I know this looks like a lot of powdered sugar,
and that is because it is a lot of powdered sugar.
This is twelve cups of powdered sugar.
It's the size of my head,
but this is how much you need.
So, we're starting with powdered sugar.
We're gonna add a cup of water.
Yeah, we are.
(water babbling)
Can you hear that?
Okay.
♪ Oh, oh, oh, it's magic ♪
We're also adding some corn syrup.
(laughs)
Love a good high fructose corn syrup,
you know what I mean?
Time for some flavor.
Almond, vanilla.
Just gonna whisk these in.
Whisk until smooth.
Alright, so this is going over a double boiler.
We're gonna let this come up to about 92 degrees.
It just needs to be warm.
It doesn't need to be super hot,
it doesn't need to simmer.
How do you wake up Lady Gaga in the morning?
You poke her face. (laughs)
Smart Cookie is not having a baby right now,
but somebody out there is,
and you should probably make these petit fours for them
'cause they don't have time. (laughs)
Once you've gotten to 92 degrees or a little bit above,
now we're gonna add some white chocolate chips.
This is a cup and a half of white chocolate chips,
and we're just gonna stir these in until they melt.
Alright, my chocolate chips are all melted.
The time has come for decorating, my friends.
We have our poured fondant.
It's still warm - I've got this on low over here.
I've got a little soup ladle.
You could use a regular spoon.
We're gonna try to get all of the sides.
This is kind of a meticulous process.
This is gonna take some patience,
but just keep going.
So, before this dries we're gonna do some sprinkles.
Just a few.
Look at that.
This is the most difficult part of this recipe.
♪ Work it, put my thing down, flip it and reverse it ♪
♪ So much frosting. ♪
Sprinkles. (gleefully shouts)
Good enough!
That's how I feel about that.
I don't think these look perfect,
but I think that they look very tasty and adorable.
Alright, that was my last one.
Okay, these are done!
So, I'm gonna go let them go set up.
You can let them set at room temp for
about a half hour, or you can just
pop them in the fridge for five minutes.
Up to you!
So, our petit fours have chilled
which means that now our frosting has set.
You can touch this and nothing happens.
Amazing.
And they are ready to travel.
They travel really easily.
You can put them in little individual muffin cups
if that's easier for you.
They can go in a cake box.
They can go in a tupperware.
Whatever is easiest.
Now is the time to find out is it a boy?
Is it a girl?
Aww,
it's a boy at our fake baby shower, yay!
If you decide to make this recipe please let us know!
Don't forget to like, share, subscribe, comment,
ring the bell on YouTube!
Let us know.
Have a great day!
(humming) Yeah.
That's too much cake. (laughs)