Chocolate and raspberry petit fours

Background

I’ve been trying to improve my decoration skills lately. I decided that the best way to rapidly improve would be to make lots of little things rather than a single big thing. One of the guys at the soup kitchen had been asking for chocolate so I concocted a layered petit fours.

This is a layer of white chocolate sponge sandwiched between two layers of plain chocolate sponge with raspberry jam. Topped with dark chocolate ganche, white chocolate lines and a raspberry.

This recipe might seem long and with a lot of ingredients, but, each step is not hard. You will probably need around 3 or 4 hours to make these - a lot of it is cooling time. To summarise it: make some sponges, put them together with jam, cover with ganache, cut and decroate. Easy.

At least two 8x12” swiss roll tins. These are flat sided and have at most an inch height on the side. Having three tins will save on some washing up. I use these.

An icing bag.

Greaseproof paper.

A nice sharp knife.

A ruler.

Ingredients

Makes ~45. Only 40 survive “testing”. You will have spare cake batter left over that can be used to make cupcakes.

Plain chocolate sponge

4 medium eggs (weigh them they should be roughly 200g)

70g cocoa powder

Self-raising flour - subtract 70g from the egg weight and use this. If your eggs weighed 205g then you need 205g - 70g = 135g flour

Unsalted butter - same weight as the eggs

Caster sugar - same weight as the eggs

White chocolate sponge

3 medium eggs (weigh them they should be roughly 150g)

75g white chocolate

Unsalted butter - same weight as the eggs

Caster sugar - same weight as the eggs

Self-raising flour - same weight as the eggs

Filling

340g seedless raspbery jam (a small jar)

Decoration

~50 nice looking small raspberries (a 225g punnet should be enough)

For the dark chocolate ganache:

250g double cream

170g dark chocolate

For the white chocolate ganache:

75g double cream

75g white chocolate

When making ganche I weigh my cream. I find this far easier to get consistent ganache than trying to line things up exactly in a measuring bowl. This will require slightly more than one standard 300ml tub of double cream available in most UK supermarkets.

Method

Notes

This recipe involves a large amount of waiting. Get Netflix ready.

There will be some cake batter left over. I used this to make cupcakes.

Plain chocolate sponge

Oven temperature: 140°C for a fan oven

Line two 8x12” swiss roll tins with greaseproof paper Cream together the butter and sugar Mix in the cocoa powder Mix in the eggs Mix in the flour Pour ~300g of mixture into each swiss roll tin. You will likely end up with a moderate amount of batter leftover, this can be used in cupcakes. It’s important that each layer is equal in weight. Each layer will seem very thin, but, they’re meant to be Smooth the batter as much as possible. It doesn’t have to be perfect, when we slice into the smaller portions the differences will be less noticable Bake for 15-20 minutes until the sponge is coming away from the side of the pan. Put on the side to cool whilst you make the white chocolate sponge

White chocolate sponge

Note the change in oven temperature oven temperature: 160°C for a fan oven.

Line one 8x12” swiss roll tin with greaseproof paper Cream together the butter and sugar Mix in the eggs Melt the white chocolate using your preferred method (I microwave mine on half power very carefully) Pour the white chocolate in whilst continuing to mix (a stand mixer will make this much easier) Mix in the flour Pour 300g of mixture into the swiss roll tin. Again, leftovers can be used to make cupcakes Smooth the batter as much as possible Bake for 10-15 minutes until the sponge is coming away from the side of the pan Put on the side to cool. Once they are cool enough carefully remove them all from their paper. Be very careful with them as they are fragile. I found that putting a cooling wire on top of them and then inverting made it far easier to remove the paper without worrying about breaking

Giant sponge assembly

I assume you know how to make ganache. If not, here is a tutorial.

Split the raspberry jam in half. Give each half a quick stir to make it less solid Lay the dark chocolate layer on some clingfilm on top of a chopping board. Later, We are going to be wrapping the entire cake in clingfilm and chucking it in the freezer Cover the sponge with half the raspberry jam Carefully lay the white sponge on top Cover the sponge with the remaining half of the raspberry jam Carefully lay the final sponge on top (the photo below excludes the clingfilm as I forgot to photo it until I unwrapped it all) Remember that clingfilm? Wrap the whole cake up and put it all in the freezer (including the chopping board as this makes it easier to transport). This will firm everything up and make it easier to work with Wait 30 minutes Make the dark chocolate ganache and leave to cool for 5 minutes, it needs to be a pouring consistency Get the sponges out of the freezer and remove the clingfilm. It should be a lot easier to handle now that it is stiff Pour the dark chocolate ganache on top. Don’t worry about spillages over the side, it’s important that the whole thing is covered consistently Quickly smooth the top with something nice and flat like a palette knife and use a cocktail stick (or other sharp implement) to pierece any bubbles that might have cropped up Make the white chocolate ganache now, it takes a long time to cool to the right consistency for piping Leave to cool for 30-60 minutes until the dark chocolate ganache on top has set. You can put this in the fridge, but, it might turn the ganache matt rather than glossy

Cutting and decoration

Nearly there! Make sure your knife is really sharp to reduce the amount of squashing you do. Further, don’t apply the knife straight down as this just spreads out the pressure of the knife and makes cutting harder.

Carefully trim the two long edges off Carefully trim one of the short edges off (we leave the other one on as it doesn’t need cutting until the very end) Cut a 1” wide strip from one long edge to the other. For clarity, you will end up making 11 of these cuts Cut the strip lengthways in half and half again to get four mini cakes Repeat until all of the slab is cut Eat the offcuts The white chocolate ganache should be at a consistency where you can pipe it onto a chopping board, hold it sideways and it should stay where it is Pipe the ganache over each piece individually. I used a zigzag pattern and allowed the turns to hang over the edges for a bit of extra visual appeal to the sides. After doing each piece, put a raspberry at the top edge Behold your work, for it is good and you should be well chuffed

About me

I have a baking problem. An addiction some might say. I'm not a professional baker as I like to bake what I want to bake and I get bored of making the same thing over and over. I love creating new recipes and trying new ingredient combinations. I'm constantly trying to improve my craft.

I can be found on Instagram where I post pictures of things that I bake, not just my own recipes. I frequent the baking subreddit and occassionally give advice if I have some.

More recipes that I have created can be found here.

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