Masala Herb

Flavorful Recipes

  • Home
  • Recipes
  • TRAVEL
  • Contact
  • New? Start HERE!
menu icon
go to homepage
search icon
Homepage link
  • Home
  • RECIPES
  • Contact
  • New? Start Here!
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Pinterest
    • Twitter
    • YouTube
  • ×
    You are Here: Masala Herb » Recipes » French

    French Petit Fours Cookies Recipe

    Oct 1, 2024 by Helene Dsouza

    • Share
    • Tweet
    • Flip
    • Email
    • Share
    • Threads
    • Bluesky
    Helene Dsouza
    These are easy to prepare fun looking French sweet petit fours. You can make these for any festivities such as Christmas, new year, easter, valentines day, baby shower, wedding etc. Just pick the sweet food grade decoration that you want to use to adapt to the season or occasion. We made those petit fours for Christmas so we used Christmas themed deco. This recipe makes about 50 petit fours, you can half the ingredients for half recipe.
    Total Time: 50 minutes minutes
    Prep Time: 40 minutes minutes
    Cook Time: 10 minutes minutes
    50 petit fours
    RECIPE
    Easy Petit Fours Recipe - How to make petit fours [Sweet] - little sweet cookie almond marzipan based bites with nougat chocolate and a sugar decoration. These are perfect for any festivities. You can decorate your petit fours to your liking. www.MasalaHerb.com #french #petitfours #dessert #masalaherb

    I think this easy Petit Fours Recipe is essential during any festive season!

    These French little indulging treats are great to make with kids too and petit fours don't need to be necessarily complicated little sweets.

    Easy Petit Fours Recipe - How to make petit fours [Sweet] - little sweet cookie almond marzipan based bites with nougat chocolate and a sugar decoration. These are perfect for any festivities. You can decorate your petit fours to your liking. www.MasalaHerb.com #french #petitfours #dessert #masalaherb
    Recipes from around the world E-Book

    Global Food Recipes

    with Spices and Herbs

    Free E-Book available for a limited time. Grab yours now and get instantly inspired!

    00
    Days
    :
     
    00
    Hours
    :
     
    19
    Minutes
    :
     
    59
    Seconds

    You missed out!

    Recipes from around the world E-Book

    Your Free E-Book 

    was sent to your

    E-Mail Address!

    Please check your Spam folder

    So, what are Petit Fours essentially, you might ask?

    Petit Fours [pronunciation] are bite-sized appetizers or snacks.

    Basically, they can be sweet or savory, but more often we associate petit fours with sweet bites.

    The more elegant looking petit fours, commonly seen at special functions, are always pretty looking, perfected & elaborate bites.

    In local homes in France, sweet petit fours tend to look more down to earth and maybe not that catchy because there is no rule what a petit four may or may not be.

    Jump to:
    • 🔪 How to make easy Petit Fours from scratch?
    • 💡 Ideas to decorate your petit fours according to the season/occasion
    • 👁️ Similar Petit Fours recipes 
    • 📖 Recipe
    • 💬 Comments
    Easy Petit Fours Recipe - How to make petit fours [Sweet] - little sweet cookie almond marzipan based bites with nougat chocolate and a sugar decoration. These are perfect for any festivities. You can decorate your petit fours to your liking. www.MasalaHerb.com #french #petitfours #dessert #masalaherb

    You see, the history of petit fours goes like this...

    The origin of petit fours comes from French bakers of the past.

    So apparently they are called petit fours, which means small oven translated because you would bake them at the side of other bigger baking "projects".

    The reason for that is because the oven would still be hot but I suppose not hot enough for a big cake, so the good women and men would come up with small éclaire, marzipan, and macaroon version aka petit fours to bake and so to use up the remaining heat of the dying flame in the oven and so to fill in the waiting time of the workers.

    And I suspect that sometimes, left over dough was common so you would want to use that up as well and make the most of it.

    After all, you don't waste resources, energy and time, right?

    Besides people back then liked already small bites, think Madeleine's!

    While Madeleine was mostly a treat for traveling train friends, petit fours were a richer men's indulgence between breakfast and lunch hour or a quick fulfilling bite during the afternoon hours.

    You see, you don't want to feel hungry when you create a master piece of art such as Monsieur Chopin did.

    🔪 How to make easy Petit Fours from scratch?

    I picked an easy to prepare petit fours recipe for you.

    We have been making these for years now and in fact, the pictures were taken last year when I made them with my mum.

    It's easier when there are two people to make these as you tend to be faster in the making process of decorating them with chocolate etc.

    To make petit fours you start out with a marzipan based dough aka almond paste.

    It's a firm easy to handle dough that doesn't crumble.

    Once you have prepared your dough let it cool in the fridge as this helps in the rolling out process later on.

    Once rolled out cut out the shapes to your liking and bake those.

    In the meanwhile keep a bain marie (double boiler) ready to melt the chocolate and nougat, you can choose between dark chocolate, white chocolate, and nougat.

    The nougat is used to stick two cookies together to make a "sandwich" cookie.

    Once the chocolate is molten, cover your cookies to your liking with the chocolate and stick molded icing sugar decoration on each petit fours.

    That's it.

    Easy Petit Fours Recipe - How to make petit fours [Sweet] - little sweet cookie almond marzipan based bites with nougat chocolate and a sugar decoration. These are perfect for any festivities. You can decorate your petit fours to your liking. www.MasalaHerb.com #french #petitfours #dessert #masalaherb

    💡 Ideas to decorate your petit fours according to the season/occasion

    To decorate the petit fours, you are free to do as you please.

    I put together a few seasonal/occasional icing decoration suggestions, which will help you to get an idea of what you could do with these petit fours.

    • Christmas decoration for Petit Fours
    • Valentine's day decoration for Petit Fours
    • Easter decoration for Petit Fours
    • Baby Shower decoration for Petit Fours
    • Superhero Birthday decoration for Petit Fours (aka my nephew is a superhero fan deco)
    • My niece's Birthday decoration for Petit Fours
    • And Petit four decorations for my birthday! Of course 🙂

    👁️ Similar Petit Fours recipes 

    • Homemade Chocolates
    • Bethmännchen
    • DIY Honey Marzipan
    Easy Petit Fours Recipe - How to make petit fours [Sweet] - little sweet cookie almond marzipan based bites with nougat chocolate and a sugar decoration. These are perfect for any festivities. You can decorate your petit fours to your liking. www.MasalaHerb.com #french #petitfours #dessert #masalaherb

    Dear Reader, how did you get to know about petit fours?

    Please let us know in the comments further below!

    Easy Petit Fours Recipe - How to make petit fours [Sweet] - little sweet cookie almond marzipan based bites with nougat chocolate and a sugar decoration. These are perfect for any festivities. You can decorate your petit fours to your liking. www.MasalaHerb.com #french #petitfours #dessert #masalaherb

    📖 Recipe

    Easy Petit Fours Recipe - How to make petit fours [Sweet] - little sweet cookie almond marzipan based bites with nougat chocolate and a sugar decoration. These are perfect for any festivities. You can decorate your petit fours to your liking. www.MasalaHerb.com #french #petitfours #dessert #masalaherb

    Easy Petit Fours Recipe

    These are easy to prepare fun looking French sweet petit fours. You can make these for any festivities such as Christmas, new year, easter, valentines day, baby shower, wedding etc. Just pick the sweet food grade decoration that you want to use to adapt to the season or occasion. We made those petit fours for Christmas so we used Christmas themed deco. This recipe makes about 50 petit fours, you can half the ingredients for half recipe.
    4.80 from 5 votes
    Print Pin Rate
    Course: Dessert
    Cuisine: French
    Prep Time: 40 minutes minutes
    Cook Time: 10 minutes minutes
    Total Time: 50 minutes minutes
    Servings: 50 petit fours
    Calories: 70kcal
    Recipe by: Helene Dsouza

    Ingredients

    For the dough:

    • 3.5 Ounces Marzipan Raw Mass
    • 1 Stick Butter
    • 2 ¼ Cups All Purpose Flour
    • 1 Cup Powdered Sugar
    • 2 Teaspoon Vanilla Sugar or regular sugar with few drops vanilla extract
    • 2 Egg Yolks
    • ¼ Cup Water

    For the decoration

    • 1.8 Ounces Dark Cacao Chocolate Unsweetened cooking chocolates only
    • 1.8 Ounces White Baking Chocolate
    • 2.5 Ounces Nougat
    • 50 Piece Powdered Sugar see in post for ideas
    US - Metric

    Instructions

    • In a bowl add all the dough ingredients listed above. Marzipan/almond paste, Butter, flour, sugar, vanilla sugar, egg yolks, and water. Mix well and beat to a smooth dough. 
      Easy Petit Fours Recipe - How to make petit fours [Sweet] - little sweet cookie almond marzipan based bites with nougat chocolate and a sugar decoration. These are perfect for any festivities. You can decorate your petit fours to your liking. www.MasalaHerb.com #french #petitfours #dessert #masalaherb
    • Once you have a smooth dough wrap a clean wrap around it and keep in the fridge for minimum 30 minutes to cool so that the dough gets a bit harder. That way it will be easier for you to roll
    • and cut out the dough. 
      Easy Petit Fours Recipe - How to make petit fours [Sweet] - little sweet cookie almond marzipan based bites with nougat chocolate and a sugar decoration. These are perfect for any festivities. You can decorate your petit fours to your liking. www.MasalaHerb.com #french #petitfours #dessert #masalaherb
    • Just before rolling out the dough, start your oven. Preheat to 180 Celsius/350 Fahrenheit.
    • Then roll out your dough to about ½ cm/0.2 inch thickness and cut out with a regular cookie cutter, repeat the process until all the dough has been cut out. 
      Easy Petit Fours Recipe - How to make petit fours [Sweet] - little sweet cookie almond marzipan based bites with nougat chocolate and a sugar decoration. These are perfect for any festivities. You can decorate your petit fours to your liking. www.MasalaHerb.com #french #petitfours #dessert #masalaherb
    • Place a baking paper on a tray and the freshly cut out cookies onto it, keep about 1 inch distance between each cookie. Bake each batch of cookies at 180 Celsius/350 Fahrenheit for about 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. watch your cookies that they don't get burned or under cooked, the time setting depends on your oven. Once baked let the cookies cool for a few minutes.
    • Then keep the black, white chocolate and nougat in a double boiler to melt. Decorate each cookie with the chocolate and nougat. For the nougat, use it between two cookies. The chocolate can be spread on the cookie surface and then press in one of the sugar decorations on top before the chocolate hardens. 
      Easy Petit Fours Recipe - How to make petit fours [Sweet] - little sweet cookie almond marzipan based bites with nougat chocolate and a sugar decoration. These are perfect for any festivities. You can decorate your petit fours to your liking. www.MasalaHerb.com #french #petitfours #dessert #masalaherb
    • Do this for all cookies and store them in a tin box [+ apple peel to keep them moist) or air tight container if you are living in a humid climate.
      Easy Petit Fours Recipe - How to make petit fours [Sweet] - little sweet cookie almond marzipan based bites with nougat chocolate and a sugar decoration. These are perfect for any festivities. You can decorate your petit fours to your liking. www.MasalaHerb.com #french #petitfours #dessert #masalaherb

    Notes

    1. Vanilla Sugar is also known as Vanillin
    2. Choose an icing sugar deco that you like to use

    Nutrition

    Nutrition Facts
    Easy Petit Fours Recipe
    Amount Per Serving (17 g)
    Calories 70 Calories from Fat 27
    % Daily Value*
    Fat 3g5%
    Saturated Fat 1g5%
    Cholesterol 12mg4%
    Sodium 18mg1%
    Potassium 22mg1%
    Carbohydrates 8g3%
    Sugar 4g4%
    Protein 1g2%
    Vitamin A 65IU1%
    Calcium 6mg1%
    Iron 0.4mg2%
    * Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.
    • Share
    • Tweet
    • Flip
    • Email
    • Share
    • Threads
    • Bluesky

    I am Helene, and I created Masala Herb in 2011. Here you will learn to cook with spices and herbs. I share from scratch, international food recipes and my mission is to teach you to cook flavorful food at home. Read More…

    MasalaHerb.com as seen on

    Comments

      4.80 from 5 votes (2 ratings without comment)

      Leave a Comment Cancel reply

      Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

      Recipe Rating




      This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

    1. Sandra says

      January 27, 2020 at 8:25 pm

      1. Is the chocolate jars touching the water ?
      2. I’ve been so scared of tempering ... I don’t need to use a thermometer ? If not great !
      3. What brand chocolates and nougat do you use.?

      Reply
      • Helene Dsouza says

        January 28, 2020 at 10:11 am

        Hi Sandra,
        1. Yes, the chocolate jar is touching the water.
        2. No, I didn't use a thermometer in this recipe, because I wanted to simplify this recipe. Tempering chocolate is mainly useful when you want shiny crisp chocolate. You can do it here if you want to. To be honest, most homes in Europe don't care about tempering chocolate. lol we just want to make our treats.
        3. To 99% of the time, I use Dr.Oetker chocolates or nougats because they are reliable.

        I hope this helps. 🙂

        Reply
    2. Beate Grobe says

      July 10, 2018 at 11:22 am

      4 stars
      My Family doesn't like Marzipan or Almond Past, what kind of basic Dough can I make for the Petit Fours

      Reply
      • Helene Dsouza says

        July 10, 2018 at 12:46 pm

        hm you can use a normal sweet shortcrust dough with egg, also called Pâte sablée in French. The Egg will give the dough the strength to not fall apart. Or use the conventional shortcrust dough as in this stamped cookies recipe.

        Reply
    3. Agness of Run Agness Run says

      December 20, 2017 at 5:03 pm

      These cookies seem like a mouth-watering treat and are the perfect treat for Christmas time, Helene. Can't wait to try them and surprise my family! 🙂

      Reply
    4. Elaine @ Dishes Delish says

      December 20, 2017 at 2:00 am

      These petit fours look so delicious and cute!! I never knew the history! Great recipe that I can't wait to try!

      Reply
    5. Madi says

      December 15, 2017 at 6:46 pm

      These are so cute! I've always wanted to try petit fours!

      Reply
    6. Rebecca says

      December 15, 2017 at 3:21 am

      these are too cute! thanks for the tutorial

      Reply
    7. Rebecca Hubbell says

      December 15, 2017 at 4:16 am

      What a fascinating origin, I had no idea why they were called petit fours!

      Reply
    8. Hannah says

      December 15, 2017 at 3:43 am

      5 stars
      Really love how these petit fours are so versatile and fun to make! Always a way to go for Christmas! 🙂

      Reply
    9. Diana says

      December 15, 2017 at 3:28 am

      Sounds easy and delicious! I love how you decorate them at the end

      Reply
    10. Andrea @ Cooking with Mamma C says

      December 15, 2017 at 2:48 am

      5 stars
      Wow, what a thorough article! I've had petit fours but never knew the history behind them. So interesting!

      Reply
    11. Monica | Nourish & Fete says

      December 15, 2017 at 2:47 am

      These are so cute - I love the little decorating options! These would make adorable party favors, too!

      Reply

    Welcome

    Hi there! I'm Helene and here you will learn how to cook with spices and herbs. Discover global food and learn to season your food like a pro. Read more about my work and mission or head over to my food ingredient space, Unknownbite.com, and our travel space, Paulmarina.com!

    More About Me ->








    Home
    About
    As seen in
    Contact
    Terms and Conditions
    Privacy Policy

    By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies.

    Masala Herb is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com

    Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro Theme On Genesis Framework · WordPress

    Rate This Recipe

    Your vote:




    A rating is required
    A name is required
    An email is required

    Recipe Ratings without Comment

    Something went wrong. Please try again.