Number Three: Bake Petit Fours

I didn’t actually bake petit fours. I made rainbow cookies instead. They are sort of the same thing. When I think of petits fours (which are these French pastry things… Petit four Wiki page) I think of several thin layers of pound or sponge cake with raspberry between the layers cut into teeny, tiny little squares, covered with chocolate and decorated. Rainbow cookies are much the same, just way more awesome.

Rainbow cookies are an Italian-American dessert, mainly New York-Italian-American. For the longest time I thought they were a Jewish thing, but on Long Island, Italian and Jewish are essentially the same thing. Seriously ask any Jew or Italian from Long Island. One and the same.

Anyways, Rainbow cookies are SOOO Italian that they are even made to look like the Italian flag. Each layer is colored either green, red, or white. Well, the white layer is actually yellowish and is not colored, but is just left in its original cake color to represent white. The layers are made from an almond cake and there is a raspberry or apricot jam between each of the layers. And then the whole thing is topped with chocolate. Sometimes people add sprinkles.

I grew up eating these every Saturday after services at our synagogue (which is why I thought they were Jewish). I would go from cookie tray to cookie tray trying to find as many rainbow cookies as I could. There were only a few of them per tray and always cut so small. Then my friends and I would take our cookie finds to the coat closet and share. Another great thing about them is they can be made to be kosher for Passover. Which I love because my birthday usually falls over Passover and I hate not getting to have cake, but I loves me a whole tray of rainbow cookies!

These were easier to make than I thought they would be. However still a little complicated. Well, more time consuming than complicated. I decided not to make mine Italian flag colored. They were supposed to be lime green, orange and purple, but I ran out of purple coloring and tried to mix blue and red, which didn’t work. So they are dark redish purple, green and orange.

I am very happy with the results. They taste is a little extra almondy, because I took the advice of the pastry chef who commented on All-recipes.com saying they always add almond extract. I might skip that step next time. Don’t get me wrong though, I could still eat the whole plate. But I won’t. I promise.

Get the recipe HERE

So one more goal down. 30 days left and 9 more goals to go…

Above: Never used parchment paper before, but it rocks!

Below: Just out of the oven!

Above and Below: At this point in the process it didn't look very promising. I was getting worried. Especially when the entire green layer broke in 3 pieces... but I glued it back together with raspberry jam.

Above: But hey, they turned out great!

Below: And Delicious!

Number 4: “Learn To Use/Make Fondant/Modeling Chocolate”

To start: What is Modeling Chocolate? and What is Fondant?


I am a product of America and generation Y or X or Q (or whatever, I have no idea actually, which generation I am a “product of” I just liked the way that sounded). being American and of this generation (whichever one it was) we were always told (and I believed) "you can do anything!" And for some reason one of those things I believed was that I was a dessert decorating wizard. This of course was never true. My little sister is way better at it than me, at both baking and decorating. I am pretty mediocre. I don’t know just when it was that I became so delusional. In my mind baking was MY thing that she so rudely ripped out from under me by being so suddenly awesome at it. In reality, aside from her natural talents (she is naturally quite talented at this sort of thing), she took months and months of Wilton cake decorating classes, majored in food sciences in college, and even studied cooking in Florence, Italy for a few months. I was really just jealous when my little sister surpassed my mediocre cake decorating abilities and became more awesome than me at something (She is actually more awesome than me at a lot of things). But looking back on our childhood and teenage years, she was always cooking and baking (hence her choice to study it in college). I can count on one hand the number of cakes I baked and decorated. I think I made 3. THREE. Yup that’s it. I really admire my sister’s abilities and am so impressed by all the cakes she makes. If I could learn to be half as awesome as her, my cakes and cupcakes would seriously ROCK. So I have a lot of baking related goals on my list. Some are things that sounded cool to me. Some things I just like to eat or want to taste. This particular goal is just the beginning of my baking and decorating adventures!

So the modeling chocolate thing was not going well already. Well the cupcake part was not going as planned anyway. I had baked the cupcakes on Tuesday night so they would be ready when my friend, KC, came over to teach me how to make and use the modeling chocolate on Wednesday. Why is it no one sells regular cake mix anymore? Only extra moist or moist? Those are NOT good for decorating cupcakes or cakes. Before I baked the cupcakes, KC had suggested I also make a pound cake mix and add a little bit of that in there because that would solve the moist gooey problem that occurs when using the moist or extra moist cake mixes. I looked everywhere for pound cake mix and I couldn’t find any. So I just baked the cupcakes without it. I went home to have some lunch on Wednesday. While I was there I decided to check on the cupcakes. I had put them in a container before they even had a chance to cool so that I could go to bed. Well, they were all moist and gooey on top which is the WORST THING EVER for icing cupcakes. The icing just sticks and pulls the top layer of cupcake off and it is stupid. Just plain stupid. I decided to leave the cupcakes out of the box and hopefully the moistness would dry or go away or something.


The moistness did not completely go away by the time I got home form work so I took the baby (I guess she would be a toddler now) and we went out in search of pound cake mix. I ended up finding the most expensive cake mix I had ever seen, a box of Duff Goldman's white cake mix for $7.99. Yup, $7.99. I thought, This stuff had better be good! Well, I got home and baked it and turns out if was perfect for what I needed it for. I still haven't tasted it yet though... 

KC was running a little late, but when she arrived I was totally ready to go. It turns out modeling chocolate is not as difficult as I had originally anticipated and it’s totally fun! It tastes like tootsie rolls and is as fun as playdough! It’s made from corn syrup and chocolate. We colored it lime green, neon yellow, neon, blue, and neon pink because those were the colors we had. I decided I wanted to make little flower shapes because I wanted to keep it simple on my first attempt and I found these cute little flower shaped cookie type cutters that are used for fondant and modeling chocolate.

We also made icing. Which, again, was even easier than I thought. I don’t know if I’ll be buying store bought icing anymore. Unless I am in a hurry I guess.  

The cupcakes turned out pretty and cute! Thanks KC for all your help!!! I hope they taste good. I am a little nervous about the taste since I have never used that cake mix before, never made icing before, and obviously never made modeling chocolate before either. I guess we shall see tonight…

Here is a pic of the cupcakes and a little of the "process":

So, Ilyssa, How are my cupcakes? Did I do a good job?