Petits fours: bonbons, truffles, dragées and rocks

A petit four is what fits in the palm and sells by the box: filled bonbons, truffles, dragées, rochers, candied fruit in chocolate, marshmallow and pâte de fruit. The format most people start selling with: a small batch, a cost you can work out, and a decent shelf life.

The lessons in this group cover both the filling and the shell: a thin shell with no ridges, an even dragée coating without special equipment, and a stable ganache that holds its shape during moulding.

Shelf life is set by the filling, not by the chocolate. A dark chocolate shell keeps for months on its own, but a cream ganache lives two to three weeks, up to four with added butter, and up to six with invert sugar or glucose syrup, which bind the free water. A filling with fresh fruit purée cuts it to a week regardless of everything else.

Storage is stricter than it looks: 16 to 18 degrees and humidity below 55 per cent. A fridge will not do — it is both colder than needed and above eighty per cent humidity, and the temperature change on the way out brings condensation and a sugar film on the surface.

In this format cost is driven by the share of handwork rather than by ingredients. Dragées and rochers are made in a batch and need little attention per piece; filled bonbons need tempering, polished moulds and piped filling — at a similar ingredient cost the time per piece differs several times over. Worth weighing up when choosing what to start selling.