Adventures in Petits Fours

I try to get inspiration from every source possible. This time it came in the form of a Swiss Colony catalog. I'm jealous of how perfect the professionals can get their products to look, as my stuff always comes out just barely looking slightly better than amateur, at best. If you aren't aware of what they are, here's an example:

Not my own creation, but I wish.

 Now I don't try to get too ambitious with any of my kitchen experiments right away, so I took a very simple approach for my first attempt. I decided to make red velvet with a chocolate ganache, and I think they turned out okay. I first tried using an icing recipe I found on another blog, but it turned out to be absolutely horrible in every way possible. It was like eating pure sugar, and the consistency was grainy and thick.

Above you can see the sheets of cake out of the pan, then cut up, and then my final result. They don't look the best, and I didn't make enough ganache to cover every piece, but they taste damn delicious. I didn't quite have a uniform size for every piece, either, as they all seemed to vary in height. I still have more than half of the pieces yet to cover, so perhaps tomorrow I'll make more ganache and try again, or find a more reliable fondant/icing recipe.