Valentine Petit Fours

Wanna see what's peeking out from behind the window in this post?

Well I should start by telling you mine won't be featured in a food magazine anytime soon, and they were a pain to make, but, I'll share anyway. Once I committed to this project, I was determined to finish it. Well, that, and they were for Ella's teachers, I had nothing else to give them, and I did this the night before they were supposed to taken to school.

So here goes. Along with these guys (the Oreo ones crumbled too much for me and I definitely preferred the "golden") you need red coloring paste and royal icing. And, well, sprinkles, cookie cutters, and other decorative doo-dads.

And fondant. This stuff is a pain to color.



And it will stain your hands. For days.


Ok, so back to business. I used something round, I don't even remember what, to make my circles. Then I sat the cakester baby on top.

Then I bunched the fondant up around the cakester smoothly and discarded the excess. This is different than the tutorial I saw (more on that soon) but it was easiest for me this way with my "helper" around.

You just need to cut off (with a knife or pair of scissors) the bottom. They'll look like this. Don't look too closely at mine. There are plenty of imperfections from this far away.

As a fair warning, I suggest doing this during school, nap time or bedtime. Whew! My little helper wore me out. She ate the fondant, made a mess of the sprinkles, and even pulled out the gingerbread cookie cutters and decorated them with royal icing...

Then you decorate these babies to your heart's desire. My pink ones were rolled in red sprinkles after being brushed on the sides with cornstarch and water and topped with a red fondant heart. The red ones were just piped with white icing. The white ones were decorated with pink royal icing on the top and sides and the inside of the hearts were filled in (or in decorator's terms, flooded) with thinner icing and doused with sprinkles. The sprinkles stick to the flooded part, but not the thicker icing. These were simple decorations I did, but my frustration level was through the roof and I was ready to be finished!

After some drying time has elapsed, place these babies in a container of some sort,

and package them up for gift giving (or eating)! Ella's teachers received these.

Now, if you want to see where my idea came from and how they really should be done, check it out here.