The clearest way to understand the difference between a mini cake and a petit four is to plan a table with each. You allow one mini cake per guest. You allow three to five petit fours per guest. Everything else about the two formats follows from that gap in scale.
The mini cake: one serving, finished individually
A mini cake is a whole dessert shrunk to a single portion, and it is finished like one. The Lemon Daisy is a tangy lemon cake under a white chocolate ganache. The Nutella is a ground hazelnut cake with a Nutella white chocolate ganache. The Caprese is finely ground almonds and dark chocolate, dense and flourless in the Italian style. They start at $9 individually and also come as a tray of six or a tray of twelve, and the whole mini cake range works the same way: one guest, one cake, no cutting and no serving spoon.
The petit four: fifteen to a tray
The name comes from the French for small oven, which explains how they were once baked and nothing about how they eat now. A petit four tray is $60 and holds fifteen pieces, and there are ten flavours: Mocha, The Pear, S'more, Emerald, Tronco, Miniature Tiramisu, Passionfruit Pavlova, Blueberry Panna Cotta, Dark Chocolate Strawberry Brownie and Snickers.
All ten are made with no added gluten. Under recent New Zealand food labelling rules we do not claim anything is gluten free, only that we have not added gluten-containing ingredients, and our kitchen is small and without exclusive production areas for all of our different recipes, so traces may occur. Nothing is guaranteed safe for severe coeliac disease. The Snickers petit four contains peanuts, plainly, and we never claim anything is nut free. The no added gluten cakes and desserts collection shows what else sits in that category.
What changes when a dessert gets smaller
Not much is removed. That is the surprising part. A Passionfruit Pavlova petit four is a meringue shell piped by hand, crisp on the outside and marshmallowy inside, filled with passionfruit curd. A Blueberry Panna Cotta is real vanilla bean panna cotta, set by hand, with blueberries underneath. A Dark Chocolate Strawberry Brownie has a brownie base, dark chocolate whipped cream and strawberry jam. A Snickers has a peanut chocolate cake, a dulce de leche mousse and a peanut crunch. Every one of those components is made separately and then assembled at a scale where a millimetre is visible. Shrinking a dessert does not simplify it; it multiplies the number of small, exacting operations.
Why seven days rather than two
Most of what we make needs two days' notice, and the larger desserts need three. Petit fours need seven, and the reason is arithmetic rather than difficulty. One tray is fifteen pieces. Each piece carries three or four components that are made separately before anything is assembled. A modest order of four trays is sixty pieces, each with its own three or four components, all made with no added gluten, in a kitchen that is also producing the day's cabinet. Seven days is what makes that work without shortcuts, and it is the number to plan backwards from: pick the date, count back seven, and order before that.
Building a table with both
For twenty to fifty guests the two formats do different jobs. Petit fours give you range and volume, three to five a head, and they read as detail on a modern table. Mini cakes give every guest one complete dessert with no cutting, which matters when there is no kitchen and no staff. A cake from the tea cakes and loaves range adds height in the middle, holds at room temperature and needs no fridge. The mini cakes and petit fours collection has the full range in one place, and the dessert catering boxes page sets out the other formats.
Before committing to four trays, come in with whoever is hosting alongside you and buy two mini cakes from the cabinet, one each, then swap halfway. Ten minutes at a table tells you more than any amount of looking at photographs, and the decision ends up shared rather than defended later.
Ordering and visiting
Petit four trays need seven days' notice, mini cake trays need two, and the checkout date picker only offers dates the kitchen can meet for what is in your cart. Pickup is from our patisserie inside The Welder on Welles Street in the central city, and we are collection only, events included. We are open 10am to 6pm Tuesday to Friday and 10am to 3pm Saturday.
