Petit Fours

These are such a great addition to a holiday table. They taste great, but they're even better to look at! Also, if you're having a New Year's celebration, these would feed a lot of people as finger foods, and they're really just stunning.

I decorated these with pretty much every available garnish in my parents' house over Christmas. Almond slivers, pine nuts, crushed hazelnuts, whole pecans, sea salt, cocoa powder, shaved white chocolate, crystallized ginger, and I'm sure there are others I'm already forgetting! So we had about 20 variations of petit fours for dessert.

I really recommend making your own cake for inside the petit fours. I used one homemade pound cake and one store-bought gingerbread loaf cake. The pound cake was perfect, easy to dip into the chocolate ganache, and stayed perfectly moist. The store-bought gingerbread loaf was crumbly, much more difficult to dip, and dried out faster. Even using a box mix, the homemade was still far superior.

Petit Fours

INGREDIENTS:

1 medium-size pound cake (substitute flavored pound cake or loaf cake as desired)

1/2 cup raspberry jelly

12 ounces semi-sweet chocolate

1/2 cup heavy cream

Nuts, ginger, shaved chocolate and sea salt for topping

DIRECTIONS:

1. Cut pound cake into 1" cubes, and then cut the cubes in half.

2. Spread jelly in the center of the two halves of each cube, and push together (see picture, below).

3. In a double boiler, heat chocolate until just starting to melt. Remove from heat and stir in the heavy cream. Stir until thick and silky, heating over the double boiler again if necessary.

4. Dip each pound cake sandwich into the chocolate, and place on wax paper on a baking sheet. Use a knife to smooth out fingerprints.

5. Decorate each petit four with chopped nuts or other garnishes. Refrigerate until serving.

Makes about 30 petit fours, can be doubled.