Miniature desserts.....

[Eeyore]

...and petit fours.

Any ideas for one or two bite desserts for a banquet? We'll have about 200 and I want to do some different things. You know, not just truffles, mini tartlets and regular petit fours.

[Kimmie]

In Sweet Miniatures : The Art of Making Bite-Size Desserts by Flo Braker, you will find popular favorites including:

Individual Lemon Meringue Tarts
Shortbread Cameos
Viennese Triangles
Krumkake
Pistachio Petit Fours
Neapolitan Wedges
Lebkuchen
Miniature chewy Panforte di Siena
Crispy Florentine Squares
Tangy Shreveshire Tarts

Little sweet somethings--Candied Almond Clusters, Golden Caramels, and Toffee Butter Crunch and much much more.

You might also want to flip through Baking with Julia where Flo Braker displays some petit four recipes:

Miniature Florentine Squares
Glazed Mini-Rounds
Madeleines and Lady Fingers (you can make them bite-size)

At last, in Claudia Fleming's book The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern, you will find Chestnut-honey madeleines, Earl Grey Chocolate Truffles. There's also the famous chocolate-caramel tart (she describes it as a highly sophisticated Rolo candy) and you certainly can make miniature ones. Don't forget to sprinkle with Fleur de Sel just before serving.



You will also find some ideas in Professional Pastry Chef, 3rd ed.[i]

[pjm333]

eeyore
Here is a very good bite size desseret
LAMINGTONS
2 1/2 C cake flour
2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
6 oz butter
1 1/2 C sugar
3 eggs
3 /4 C milk
SYRUP
3/4 C hot coffee
1 oz butter
1/2 C cocoa
1 1/2 C 10X

desicatted coconut
Sift dry, cream butter and sugar, add eggs and beat 5 min. add dry and wet beggining and ending with dry
Bake at 350 degrees about 30 min..tester clean.Cool down and cut into bite size pieces. For the syrup, blend all ingredients.Dipe cake pieces in coffee syrup , Break a piece open..you want almost to be soaked 1/2 way through.. Remove from syrup and roll in coconut

pat

[Anna W.]

The Sophisticated Cookie has a lot of really good recipes. Three of my favorites are Bailey's tartlets (filled with Bailey's 'pudding'), B-52 chocolate chip cookies (easy to make, just cut them into sticks instead of squares), and truffled brandy balls.

I'd also like to second the recomendation for Sweet miniatures by Flo Braker.

[LotusCakeStudio]

I always include palmiers on any mini pastry buffet. They're cheap, yummy, and easy to make a bunch of them at once. You can make the dough far in advance and keep it in the freezer. Then re-sugar and bake it up to 2 days in advance. I store them on plates or whatever is handy and wrap in plastic film.

[Spoons]

Yes, Sweet Miniature's-Flo Braker
Also, Gale Gand's "Just A Bite"
(125 Lusciuous Little Desserts)

[Pete]

Gale Gand's book is wonderful. Our pastry chef just got and I had a chance to look it over. Very nice and lots of ideas.

[Isa]

Are you interested in tarts or cakes and cookies?

I do a lot of nut tarts, almond or pistachio are my favourite. Anything with chocolate is appreciated. My latest is white chocolate ganache with raspberries in a chocolate crust.

Everything goes with chocolate ganache the possibilities are endless. I just did a maple chocolate mini tart, they quickly disappeared. Candied orange and chocolate tarts are out of this world. So are candied ginger tartelettes.

Of course there are traditional petits fours. Don't forget most deserts can be done in smaller size.

[isaac]

some ideas:

jelly rolls... sounds stupid but it works

another idea is little mousselets (if that is a word). just make a sponge batter and take sheet pans and line it with parchment. then spread the batter all over it... make it thin and even. brake for a few minutes. let cool. (make sure you have a lot of little steal mold circles). take the "sheet cake" and cut circles. line each mold with the circles.. make mousse... pipe in the molds and freeze. after a few hours.. unmold.

hope this help

[shroomgirl]

jellies
candied dipped zest
of course funky filled strawberries, figs or dates

[Eeyore]

Thanx,

well I got teamed up with a partner that cant seem to think outside the box. We are doing:

Mini square choc. cakes (boring)
pound cake finger sandwiches (a little better)
mini baked Alaskas(different but scary)
chocolate velvit mini tartlets with white swans "swimming" in them
fancy diamond-shaped petit fours of very thin layers of almond cake and raspberry jam
white and dark chocolate mousse terrine(required)
banana-macadamia spring rolls(I had to put my foot down about this one)

I have extra mousse, any easy suggestions for use? Also, presentation? I haven't even thought about it yet.

thank you all again.

eeyore

[CompassRose]

The most popular tiny desserts from the catering company my company uses the most often are:

little chocolate tart-shaped moulds or shells, white or dark chocolate, filled with chocolate mousse, and

various sorts of Middle Eastern phyllo pastry things.