I remember a couple times in my childhood when either my mom or grandma would go to Highland Park Bakery and get us kids a special occasion individual cake — a large petit four shaped like an Easter egg or something like below, which I found in the bakery’s Facebook photos:
photo from Highland Bakery Facebook page
This year, I thought about those cakes, and remembered that my mother-in-law told me a story about petit fours from her childhood. She used to peruse her mother’s cook book, and she always paused at the pictures of petit fours, thinking about how pretty they were and who on earth would have the patience to make little cakes like that? Combining my memory and her memory, I decided to take a couple days to treat my own children and make petit fours for them (and share with my mother-in-law, too).
I made and cut a large cake into smaller pieces, then glazed them. (I ate the scraps unglazed. They tasted lovely.)
Here are a few cakes after one coat. They are still wet, which is why they look so shiny. I gave most of the cakes two coatings of glaze.
I also hid a few cakes in the bread box where no one could find them. Ella and I finished them over approximately three days’ time.
Overall, this was a really fun first for me.