Petit Fours (no-bake)

What kind of recipe is this

First let me explain what are petit fours.

The name is French and is used for the bite sized and pretty looking cakes that are normally served at tea parties and cocktails. The classic petit fours (or pasticcini mignon, as they are called in Italy) come in different colors and shapes, but in a nutshell they are mini layered cakes with jam or frosting in between the layers and nice decorations on top.

Well, the usual petit fours are normally very tasty but complicated to make.

My idea, however, was to make similar mini cakes, beautiful and full of chocolate but no-bake. I wanted the recipe to be easy and without refined ingredients…

And ultimately I came out with this incredibly good raw petit foors which I am very proud of!

What ingredients you need

You need only 6 ingredients for this recipe, if we don't count the decoration:

• Date paste or medjool dates
• Almond flour
• Coconut oil
• Coconut milk
• Dark chocolate: make sure it is refined sugar-free so that your petit fours stay healthy
• Pink chocolate: I used a natural one, sweetened with coconut sugar and colored with freeze dried strawberries. If you don't find pink chocolate, use any natural sugar-free white chocolate. The raw petit fours don't need to be pink, though! See below the decoration options.

How to assemble

These little raw cakes consist of three layers: 

• The base, made of date paste, coconut oil and almond flour
• The middle layer, made of dark chocolate, dates and coconut milk
• The top creamy layer made of pink (or white) chocolate and coconut milk

To make them, you simply need to combine the ingredients for each layer separately and then arrange the three layers in a rectangular pan.

After refrigerating the cake, slice it into mini squares and voilà! 

All the details about the preparation are below the post, in the recipe card.

Recipe tips

• You need a small rectangular pan: I used 10 x 7,5 inch or 25 x 19 cm ceramic tin but you can use any other that is close to this. If not, you can easily calculate the ingredients for your pan size with my Cake pan size conversion calculator.
• The first layer is the hardest to mix if you don't use a food processor. To make it easier, simply warm up the date paste and the coconut oil before mixing them. It is ok if the oil doesn't get absorbed initially: once you add the almond flour the mixture will become homogeneous.
• If you are not using date paste, use the same quantity of dates. Puree them in a food processor and add few tablespoons of hot water, if needed (if they are not soft enough or your processor is not powerful).
• It is important to refrigerate the bottom layers before adding each next one. That will ensure that the dessert looks nicely layered.
• You need to trim the edges when you cut the dessert into squares. The edges would be uneven and only by removing them you will have a perfectly neat petit fours.

Decoration ideas

I wanted to make a pink dessert, hence I used fresh raspberries for decoration. I also sprinkled the top layer with some beetroot powder. That's because the natural pink chocolate I used did not look pink enough.

But your dessert can be of another color. For example: you can add some blue spirulina or butterfly pea powder to the white chocolate and decorate the mini cakes with blueberries: this will create a blue-purple shade. 

Other option would be to leave the top layer white (or light brown, depending on what chocolate you use) and decorate with nuts. 

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