Vegan French Fancies

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Quite the experiment today, we used to love french fancies, which are just a brand name of a type of petite fours you can buy here. They come in pink, yellow and chocolate but even when we were vegetarian we couldn't eat the pink ones and now being vegan they are all off limits, until now of course.... Decided to just make them pink to make up for years of only having the yellow and chocolate ones! I have never worked with fondant icing before which I'm sure is evident in the above pic but it wasn't that difficult. As these were just a test I used store bought ingredients (cake mix and ready made fondant) so next I'll try everything by scratch. Also, I really needed 2 cake mixes as it was too low for the pan I used. This meant I had to cut the cake in half and stack them which then needed jam to stick the layers. The original french fancies have no jam in them and I wanted these to be pretty authentic, but still, jam will be good in these! Anyway, for now here's the rough recipe:

Cakes:
1 mix of victoria sponge cake (check vegan)
80 - 100ml sparkling water
*about 1 Tbsp raspberry jam (I used Duchy raspberry preserve with lime)
Fluffy Buttercream Frosting:
2 Tbsp vegetable fat (shortening)
2 Tbsp vegan margarine
3/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp icing sugar
1/4 plus 1/8 tsp vanilla extract
Pink Fondant Icing:
250g (about) ready made fondant icing (check vegan)
couple drops vegetarian red food colouring
Squiggles:
just add some dairy free milk to the leftover buttercream from above to make softer.

For the cake, prepare the cake mix according to instructions adding the sparkling water in place of the egg and water (the carbonation will help the cake rise). Line a 7 inch square cake pan with baking paper so that it overhangs all ends. Pour batter into pan and bake for 15 minutes at 190C. Let cool in pan for 5 minutes then lift out via the baking paper and let cool on rack - peel off paper. When cool, trim cake all along the edges then cut in half. Spread some warmed raspberry jam onto one half of the cake (the rough side), place the other half on top, make sure the cooked top is on top. You will now have a rectangular shape. Cut this in half, then each half into 4 small squares so that you have 8 squares in total:



Next prepare the fluffy vegan buttercream by simply whisking all the ingredients together until smooth, it will be slightly stiffer than the recipe for cupcakes as you want it to hold it's shape when the fondant goes on. Place frosting into a piping bag with a large straight circle tip and pipe little blobs on top of each cake:

Let these sit for awhile, at least half an hour for the frosting to set a little bit. Now make the fondant - add a few drops of food colour to the fondant and knead this in until a nice pinky colour is throughout with no marbling. I wore a pair of disposable gloves for this, otherwise your hands will look like you've committed mass murder. When done, sprinkle your work surface with icing sugar and dust your rolling pin with it. Roll out to as thin as it will go, you then have to cut out about 4 1/2 inch squares. Place one square on top of a cake, carefully press around the blob then cut off excess fondant from all sides. Press the corners so that they stick out and cut these off, even out the corners you just cut. Make sure they are stuck to the cake and as smooth as you can make it.

For the squiggles, you will have frosting leftover from the inside. Put this into a bowl and whisk in a little dairy free milk until it's a little softer than before. Place into a piping bag with a small writing tip and squiggle away!

Makes 8 french fancies.


*Edited to add - I have finally tried one and they are so good!! I'm very glad that I screwed up the size of the cake and had to spread jam in the middle - that became an essential part of these, so yummy! Also, that photo above is with a tiny espresso cup, they are not that big.

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