Petits Four
Bake a simple, light sponge cake in a shallow biscuit tin or dripping pan, and when cold turn out on the moulding board and cut into small dominoes or diamonds. They should be about an inch in depth. Split each one and spread jelly or frosting between the layers, then ice tops and sides with different tinted icings, pale green flavored with pistachio, pale pink with rose, yellow with orange, white with almond. Little domino cakes are also pretty. Ice the cakes on top and sides with white icing, then when hard put on a second layer of chocolate, using Baker's Premium No. 1 Chocolate, and made as for layer cake, dipping the brush in the melted chocolate to make the spots. Candied violets, bits of citron cut in fancy shapes, candied cherries and angelica may all be utilized in making pretty designs in decoration.--American Housekeeper.
A finishing method rather than a formula: the original assumes you can already turn out a sheet of sponge and mix icing, and spends its words on cutting and decorating.
- The panA "biscuit tin" or "dripping pan" here means a shallow rimmed sheet pan. A half-sheet (13x18 in.) or a 9x13 in. pan both work; the sponge should bake to roughly an inch, since the finished cakes are described as an inch deep and are then split.
- OvenNo temperature is given. A thin sponge sheet wants 350-375F and 12-18 minutes depending on thickness; it is done when it springs back and the edges pull from the pan.
- The hinge: chill and cut cleanCutting warm sponge tears it and the crumbs ruin the icing. Cool completely, then chill the sheet an hour, trim the crusted edges, and cut with a long thin knife wiped between cuts. Some cooks freeze the sheet briefly for a cleaner edge.
- Filling and thicknessSplitting a one-inch layer leaves two half-inch slabs, so the jelly or frosting between them must be thin and firm. Warm jam will soak the crumb; use a stiff jelly or a set buttercream, then press and chill before icing.
- Icing consistencyThe tinted icings were most likely thin poured or brushed glazes rather than a thick spreadable frosting, though the recipe does not say which. Thinned until they flow off the spoon in a ribbon they will coat the sides in one pass; sitting the cut cakes on a rack over a tray catches the run-off for re-use.
- Flavourings then and nowRose water and orange flower water are still sold; period pistachio and almond 'flavors' were often almond-based essences rather than the nut itself, and modern almond extract does the same job. Use ordinary food colouring, kept pale as the original's 'pale green' and 'pale pink' suggest.
- Baker's Premium No. 1An unsweetened baking chocolate. Melted plain it is bitter and will set dull; for the domino spots and the second coat, use melted unsweetened or bittersweet chocolate thinned with a little butter or cream so it flows from the brush and holds a round dot.
- Angelica and citronCandied angelica stems (the green strips used for leaves and stalks) and candied citron peel are specialty items now, sold by baking suppliers. Candied cherries, crystallised violets and thin strips of candied peel substitute directly.
- YieldA 9x13 in. sheet cut into one-inch by one-and-a-half-inch dominoes gives roughly 60 small cakes; allow two or three per person on a tea tray.
Petits fours means "small ovens" in French, generally traced to the practice of baking these little cakes in the cooling brick oven after the main baking was done, at a gentle falling heat. By the time this recipe appeared, the form had been thoroughly absorbed into American tea-table cookery, where fussy hand-decorated sweets in a range of pastel tints were a mark of some ambition on the part of the hostess. The domino conceit, white icing under chocolate with brushed-on pips, belongs to a late-Victorian fondness for cakes that imitate other objects. Its presence in a Walter Baker & Co. booklet is straightforwardly commercial: such booklets served to show household cooks the many places a cake of Baker's chocolate might be used, and the chocolate here is a decorative flourish rather than the substance of the cake.