Here in the United States most of us think of petits fours as those cute little square chocolate-covered cakes that come in a box around Christmastime.

That's what I thought when I asked Alex Tallen, the pastry chef at the Boothbay Harbor Country Club, about them. She nicely explained that though those little box-shaped confections are, indeed, petits fours, they actually come in any number of shapes and flavors, but are always bite-sized. They can be savory, but are most often sweet. The name is French for small oven.

Petits fours are cute, dainty and delicate-looking, but they can also be dangerously decadent and delightfully delicious. Seriously.

I've mentioned the Great British Baking Show, that I have become addicted to. I had just thought about writing about petits fours as a subject of one of my columns when I tuned in to it one day, and guess what the two funny women who host the show were talking about. That's right: petits fours. Pronounced with a British accent. “Pehtiht fhus.”

Each contestant had to make 24 petits fours, 12 biscuit-based and 12 sponge, or cake, based. They were making all manner of the cute little bite-sized confections. There were some called “brandy-snap ninety niners,” filled with raspberries, mascarpone and pistachios.

There were some made to look like tiny red roses, and there were some delicate little cakes topped with crystallized pansies. So cute! I love things that taste good and are cute. It’s a great combination, as long as it’s not too cute to eat. I’ve been known to save something for too long so I can admire it. Then it just gets gross and inedible. Dumb.

One woman on the GBBS was rolling out tiny little balls of dough for her petits fours - 5 grams each – exactly! A batch of petits fours should be uniform in size, shape, color and flavor. And by the look of the ones they were putting out that day, each batch of 12 petits fours WAS identical – six sets of twins, four sets of triplets, three sets of quadruplets, two sets of sextuplets ...

Alex held a class about petits fours at the Boothbay Harbor Country Club on June 15. She made two different kinds of the delectable little cuties that day, starting with one called a financier. The name derives from the fact that it is usually made in the shape of a solid gold brick. A small solid gold brick.

Financiers are almond-flavored, made with a lot more almond meal than flour, and are a little crunchy on the outside, and soft and chewy inside.

Alex, like the contestant on the Great British Baking Show who also made financiers, started with a brown butter: melted, and boiled until the milk solids turn a light brown. That’s usually just about the time I swear and throw it away. Burnt butter! Nope. Yummy, nutty-flavored butter!

Bummer thinking about all the butter I’ve wasted over the years, when drinking a manhattan while cooking. Come to find out that stuff can be used in a lot of delectable ways: on roasted fish, chicken, vegetables, really anything. It is so elegantly scrumptious!

Anyway. Alex set the brown butter aside to cool before it turned too dark and bitter, and whisked together some sugar, extra fine blanched almond meal and a little flour, added four egg whites, and the brown butter. The financiers were baked in greased molds, kind of like cupcakes, but much smaller, and much cuter :-)

Then she made lemon cream to top them. As the name implies, this stuff is lemon-y and creamy. And absolutely ridiculous. It is made with lemon juice (duh) and zest, eggs, sugar and butter. A LOT of butter. She put a dollop of that gorgeous pale yellow stuff on each financier (hers were round, not gold brick-shaped) then added a berry to top it off – some blueberries and some raspberries.

Next she made chocolate friands. These were little dark chocolate melt-in-your-mouth chewy bites of heaven, with a dark chocolate ganache, and topped with caramelized hazelnuts.

I am sorry I can’t share these recipes at this time, because I haven’t been given the go-ahead from Alex. But if I do, I’ll share next week. I haven't attempted to make them yet mainly because I've been out straight writing stories about new art galleries, one-year restaurant anniversaries, and an author who has sailed the world and written a book about tides.

Now I’m heading up to the cottage in Cushing. My mother and sister are on their way up from Fort Myers, and my mother will be here for a month. I'll be spending as much time as possible there and I'll be doing a lot of cooking, and drinking a lot of manhattan's. So be prepared.

By the way, Mary Berry, one of the judges on the GBBS, and a cookbook writer, said of a petit four: “It should be quite rich. With such a small mouthful you can take rich and beautiful and sickly, and all those things "

And I learned another word for delicious from her: “Scrummy.” As in, “Gosh, that’s scrummy” :-)

See ya next week!