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Easy Petit Fours Recipe – How to make petit fours [Sweet]

December 15, 2017 by Helene Dsouza 13 Comments

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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
4.89 from 9 votes
Jump to 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.

So, what are Petit Fours essentially you might ask?

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

Petit Fours [pronunciation] are bite-sized appetizer 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.

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 รฉclaire, 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 ๐Ÿ™‚

Similar Petit Fours recipes ๐Ÿซ

  • Homemade Chocolates
  • Bethmรคnnchen
  • 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
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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.
4.89 from 9 votes
Print Pin Rate
Course: Dessert
Cuisine: French
Keyword: easy petit fours, french petit fours recipe
Prep Time: 40 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 50 minutes
Servings: 50 petit fours
Calories: 70kcal
Recipe by: Helene Dsouza

Ingredients

For the dough:

  • 3.5 ounces Marzipan paste
  • 1 stick Butter
  • 2 1/4 cups All Purpose Flour
  • 1 cup Powdered Sugar
  • 2 Teaspoon Vanilla Sugar or regular sugar with few drops vanilla extract
  • 2 Egg Yolks
  • 1/4 cup Water

For the decoration

  • 1.8 ounces Dark Chocolate cooking chocolates only
  • 1.8 ounces White Chocolate
  • 2.5 ounces Nougat
  • 50 piece Icing Sugar Decoration see in post for ideas
US Customary – 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 1/2 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.
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Comments

  1. Sandra says

    January 27, 2020 at 8:25 pm

    5 stars
    1. Is the chocolate jars touching the water ?
    2. Iโ€™ve been so scared of tempering … I donโ€™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. ๐Ÿ™‚

      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 Pรขte sablรฉe 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! ๐Ÿ™‚

    Reply
  4. Elaine @ Dishes Delish says

    December 20, 2017 at 2:00 am

    5 stars
    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

    5 stars
    These are so cute! I’ve always wanted to try petit fours!

    Reply
  6. Rebecca says

    December 15, 2017 at 3:21 am

    5 stars
    these are too cute! thanks for the tutorial

    Reply
  7. Rebecca Hubbell says

    December 15, 2017 at 4:16 am

    5 stars
    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! ๐Ÿ™‚

    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

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

    Reply

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