The Not-So-Petits Fours
“At seven-twenty a single flash of hard white light shot out of Geiger’s house like a wave of summer lightening. As the darkness folded back on it and ate it up a thin tinkling scream echoed out and lost itself among the rain-drenched trees. I was out of the car and on my way before the echoes died.”
I was asked to create a recipe off of a book about murder, so I picked a good one. It’s beautifully written. It’s a classic. It’s a noir detective novel.
It’s The Big Sleep.
We follow the detective Philip Marlowe on a case that starts out with a bit of blackmail and some gambling debt, courtesy of the General and his youngest daughter, Carmen. While he’s getting all of the details about the case, the General tells him that his other daughter’s husband, Rusty Regan, is missing.
We learn that the blackmailer, Geiger, owns a rare bookshop, which fronts for a “lending library” of pornography (pg 30).
After following Geiger for a while, we find Carmen, naked, high, and unresponsive, posing for Geiger’s collection (even though Geiger was just murdered in front of her).
It’s a lot.
It’s drugs, sex, blackmail, missing persons, murder, and private detectives.
It’s noir.
I’m not entirely sure what it is about noir that makes me think of butterscotch, but it does.
So I knew I needed to incorporate it into the recipe.
I wanted to incorporate alcohol too, since alcohol makes an appearance so many times.
I also knew I wanted to base it off of a shot, since guns play such a huge role in the novel. It wouldn’t be a good noir novel if they didn’t. Shots also feel much more dramatic than regular drinks, which seemed fitting.
After reading Marlowe’s line about Carmen, I knew exactly what shot to base it off of: “You ought to wean her. She looks old enough” (pg 7).
The “Buttery Nipple.”
It’s one ounce of Bailey’s Irish Cream floating over one ounce of Buttershots (butterscotch schnapps).
It’s delicious, if you’ve never had one.
I knew I wanted to make something small, something with cake, to represent all of the breadcrumbs Marlowe follows to solve the case.
Petits fours seemed to make the most sense.
But, because he’s larger-than-life, I wanted to make them a bit bigger than they should be.
And, instead of covering them in a classic white chocolate glaze, I decided to do something different.
Marlowe isn’t sweet. He’s cynical and sarcastic and, objectively, a bit of a jerk. But he gets the job done. So that left out white and milk chocolate. He isn’t bitter, though, so dark chocolate was out. Which left semi-sweet.
Butterscotch and Bailey’s not-so-petits fours, covered in semi-sweet glaze. They definitely fit the feel of this novel.
Butterscotch Cake
-1 stick unsalted butter, melted
-1 1/4 c light brown sugar, packed
-1 tsp baking soda
-1/2 tsp salt
-1 egg
-1 c buttermilk
-2 c all-purpose flour
-1/3 c butterscotch schnapps
In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the butter and sugar.
Add the baking soda, salt, and the egg, and mix them in.
Stir in the buttermilk.
Whisk the flour in, half a cup at a time, to make sure the batter is smooth.
Stir in the schnapps.
Pour the batter into a prepared 12 x 18 inch cake pan, and spread it evenly. I prepared my pan by spraying it with non-stick spray and putting a layer of parchment paper on the base.
Bake the cake at 375 degrees for 13-15 minutes.
Let it cool.
Once the cake is cool to the touch, stick it in the refrigerator for 30+ minutes to really cool it down. The cooler it is, the easier it will be to cut. The freezer would work best, but I didn’t have room in mine, so the fridge had to do. And it worked.
Using a round cookie cutter, about 2 1/2 inches wide, cut circles out of the sheet of cake, and place them on a cooling rack. You want to try to cut out an even number of circles. You also want the cooling rack to be on top of a cookie sheet and/or some parchment paper because you’re going to glaze the cakes on the rack, and it’ll save a lot of clean-up time later.
Bailey’s Buttercream
-2 sticks unsalted butter, soft
-2 c confectioner’s sugar
-3 tbsp Bailey’s Irish Cream
-pinch of salt
In a medium-sized bowl, whip the butter until it’s completely smooth.
Add the sugar, half a cup at a time, and whisk it in until the frosting is completely smooth.
Mix in the salt.
Pour in the Bailey’s and fold it in.
Put the frosting in a piping bag with a round tip. If you don’t have a piping bag, you can cut the corner off of a ziploc. If you don’t have a ziplock, you can use a spoon. I thought the piping bag was easier, though.
Pipe the frosting on to all of the cake disks. You want to stop just before you get to the edge.
Stack them so there are two layers of cake and two layers of frosting per cake. If you have an odd cake out, you should probably just eat it.
Semi-Sweet Chocolate Glaze
-1/2 c water
-2 tbsp light corn syrup
-2 tsp butterscotch schnapps
-6 c powdered sugar
-3/4 c semi-sweet chocolate chips
In a small saucepan, whisk the water, corn syrup, schnapps, and powdered sugar together over low heat. Make sure it’s on low heat! You don’t want anything to burn, so you really have to watch what you’re doing.
Once the mixture starts thinning, take it off of the heat and stir in the chocolate chips.
If the chocolate chips don’t melt all the way down, put it back on the heat, leave it for about 40 more seconds, then remove it and stir again. Keep doing this until the chocolate chips are completely melted.
Once the chocolate has melted down, ladle the glaze over the cakes. I poured around the sides then poured some in the center to make sure I got the glaze all over. (If you want, you can let it dry a bit, then spoon another layer of glaze over the cakes.)
Let it sit for around 30 minutes to allow the glaze set.
I ended up sprinkling the tops with some cake crumbs to bring back the breadcrumb-theme.
After the glaze is ready, you can start eating, or move them to another container. I ended up refrigerating mine and taking them to work, which really gave the glaze time to set. It’s really up to you.
And, either way, they’re to die for.
But not literally.
They were a hit at work, though.
