Thursday, March 5, 2009

The Petit Four


This one's for you, sis.  


This morning, Ashley and I were eating Petit Fours and she started asking what the petit four really was (she's quite the deep thinker).  I'm bored, so I thought I'd find out a little more about one of my current (and consistent) obsessions.  

A petit four is a small cake generally eaten at the end of a meal or served as a part of a large buffet.  The name is from the French petit four, meaning "small oven."

Modern petit fours usually consist of a geometrically cut piece of sponge cake, topped with fondant (a cream confection), often pastel in color and commonly decorated with piped icing flowers or other embellishments.  The term petit four may also, however, refer to any of a variety of small confections, especially in France.

Petit fours were traditionally made during the cooldown process of brick ovens fired by coal fuel in the 18th century.  Coal heat is hard to control as it burns so much hotter than wood, and at the time was much more expensive so waste of the heat generated was not an option.  

[Taken from Wikipedia.]

Fascinating, huh?  I think I'd rather eat them than read about them.

1 comments:

Ashley said...

i must have been drunk on petit fours because i don't remember asking that! or was it the other way around?