Petits Fours

After all the stress of the sugar exam, the school planned a very relaxing day of petits fours for us. It was so much fun! Nut allergies: beware! Everything in this practical had almond powder in it, and are simply delightful for it.

The first batch of petits fours were pistachio macarons: simple green-coloured macaron shells with a pistachio and almond paste filling. If canisters of pistachio paste didn't cost a fortune, I would spread that stuff on my toast in the morning. Yum!

The next treats were little almond souffles with bits of griotte cherries and/or pineapples in them.

Then there are the sables guitarres: hazelnut pastry squares filled with lemon-almond cream and topped with a square of dark chocolate.

We were given a bit of freedom to play around with the filling for the last batch of macarons. I was hoping to make some gingerbread ganache, but settled for a maple buttercream as they didn't have any molasses on hand. I used some brown food colouring to make the macaron shells more "maple" in colour, but they turned out some soft pink colour. I'm not normally the fondest of pink, but this one I liked.