I assume you are talking about cake type petit fours? If so, I can only tell you how we make them in our Baking & Pastry culinary class. They are made with a firm cake (we like almond sponge) baked into thin sheets then layered with jam, ganache or various buttercreams and often topped with a layer of rolled marzipan. Iced petits fours should not exceed 1 inch in height, and may be cut in different shapes as long as they can be conusumed in two bites.
After cutting, they are usually coated with heated fondant, often pastel tinted. It should be thinned until it is just thick enough to coat the petit four. Tinted royal icing or chocolate is used to pipe a delicate flower or fine scrolling design on top of the glazd petit four.
I hope this helps...I know there are other methods and I'm sure you will hear more ideas from other people.
After cutting, they are usually coated with heated fondant, often pastel tinted. It should be thinned until it is just thick enough to coat the petit four.
What is it thinned with?
you'll probably want to use poured fondant. Wilton has a recipe. Here is the way i do them, hasn't failed me yet!
Bake 1 cake mix in a jellyroll pan. I do white w/ added almond extract, strawberry, and devil's food. Bake on 325 and start checking at about 12 min. The min the cake starts to pull away from pan, it is done. You want to make sure it doesn't overbake, BTW line bottom of pan with wax paper before baking. After cake comes out of oven get another sheet of wax paper and place on top and smooth down with pot holder. leave it there for 6 min. then take wax paper off, flip onto board, take other sheet of WP off. When cake is cool, ice with very thin buttercream, should only need about a cup. place in box, seal, wrap in trash bag to keep out freezer smells. Freeze for about 3 hour but can be frozen up to 3 months. Prepare poured fondant. Take cake out of freezer, cut the sides off and cut into sqaures. I usually use my big spatula to eyeball the correct measurement. Then dip them. This can be done in many ways but what i do is take a cup of some sort, put one petit four on a small spatula and pour the fondant and then place on the wire rack for about 1-2 hours to dry. And there you go! Easy peit fours!
Winjobit77's cake sounds great! And she is right, the Wilton poured fondant is something we have used as well. So USE IT! We put the marzipan layer on top because it tends to make a nice "smooth finish" on the petit fours, (and "that's what the textbooks tell us to do!" Hee! Hee!) but it sounds like she may get a good result using a layer of buttercream? Send us pictures of how yours turn out ok?
i have an amazing lemon petite 4 cake recipe that i use( i got it from a bakery i was working at) i dont fill mine or coat it with marzipan or buttercream... i just cut them out with a cookie cutter(i like them round) and cover in pourable fondant 
You will have the best luck if they are frozen when you coat them in a class I took we melted candy melt and added 2 Tablespoons crisco to make it softer and then dipped the petti fours and that way they were coated on the bottom
only take what you can dip in 5 min out of the freezer at one time..
I don't fill mine either. I use the mini muffin pans, then don't have to freeze or cut or worry about the crumbs as much. I use the wilton poured fondant icing as well. (and white cake mix. I use scratch recipes for all other flavors, but have never yet found a white that tastes as good--or is as easy--as box). and I get RAVE reviews!!
I took a class with Kathy Scott of Sweet Expressions (has a store on ebay) and she made this wonderful system that uses cutters in different shapes. The cake is cut from a thick slice of pound cake and then put into a chocolate coated plastic former that is the shape of the cutter. You then put it in the freezer and then pop them out when the chocolate sets up. She then has small molds you can make out of fondant and place on top of the chocolate. I saw her at ICES last week and she is coming out with more small molds for Christmas.
i have an amazing lemon petite 4 cake recipe that i use( i got it from a bakery i was working at) i dont fill mine or coat it with marzipan or buttercream... i just cut them out with a cookie cutter(i like them round) and cover in pourable fondant
Could you provide us with the recipe? It sounds wonderful!
I have a question msmeg, how do you did the petit fours completely and leave no marks?
Magenta23
I would also love your lemon cake recipe!
Thanks for sharing!
Sweetcakes
Ive never made these either and Im interested in doing them soon.
When you use cutters to cut different shapes, do you use regular cookie cutters to cut them?
Are the cutters able to cut through frozen cake?
Please share
I too use Merckens coating for them. I love the way it covers & it tastes great too.
Here are my instructions on making petit fours that I have posted before on CC. Hope this helps.
Since writing these directions I have made them with other cake and filling combinations. You can use whatever you feel comfortable with.
When I decided to try to make petit fours I started looking all over the web for some instructions. I didn't find any that I completely liked so my method became kind of a hodge podge of a bunch of different methods.
I used a standard yellow cake recipe, but any fairly dense cake would probably work. I cooked it in a 12x17 jelly roll pan. Once the cake was cooled completely I leveled it and trimmed the edges off, so I would have nice sqaure pieces. Then I cut the cake in half and torted each half. I filled half with chocolate ganache and half with lemon curd. Once filled I spread a thin layer of buttercream on each cake and then put them in the freezer for a few hours.
Once frozen I cut them into one inch squares ( or use cutters for shapes) and placed them, back in the freezer. Then I took out about 12 at a time, placed them on a cooling rack, and covered them in quick pour fondant ( I used the recipe in the back of a wilton decorators book), chocolate for the ones filled with chocolate ganache. I tried a number of ways to do this however the only way that turned out to be succesful was to put the icing into a squirt bottle, like those used for ketchup or honey, and quickly cover each petit four starting at the top and working around the sides, making sure not to leave any holes. I could do about 12 at a time with the size bottle I was using. If you set the cooling rack over a large cookie sheet you can just scrape the extra icing drippings off the cookie sheet and back in the pan. After each bottle you will need to reheat the icing before refilling the bottle. The trick is to get the right consistency in your icing. If it is too thin it just runs off the cakes, too thick and you get too clumpy of a coat. I found that heating it just a little thinner, about 110 -120 degrees, than desired worked, because it would cool slightly by the time I got it transfered into the bottle.
The freezing of the cakes helps the icing set much faster than normal. Once the icing is completely set you can transfer them and decorate them any way you like. I used royal icing for my decorations.
Here's the quick pour fondant recipe:
6C confectioners' sugar, sifted
1/2C water
2T white corn syrup
1 tsp. almond extract
coloring ( optional)
Combine water and corn syrup. Add to sugar in a saucepan and stir over low heat unitl well-mixed, thin enough to be poured, but thick enough so that it will not run off the cake. Stir in extract and coloring.
For chocolate poured fondant add 3 oz. melted chocolate before adding extract.
Here are a couple pics of petit fours I have made. The pastel petit fours are actually hand covered in MMF, very time consuming, but cute if you are only making a small amount.
Thank you so much Euphoriabakery .... I'm definetly going to try to do them your way. My only question is do you not worry about covering the bottoms? Obviously the method of 'dipping' coats the entire cake.
Ok ... one more question - do you not need BC on the sides of the cakes as well? (icing after cutting them)
Thanks!
Wow I was just thinking about doing some of these. We just learned rosebuds in the class I'm taking and they mentioned putting them on petite fours and right then I had an excuse! I love CC... 
I just read over your instructions, you did a great job making this easy to understand... and your petit fours look fabulous. Thanks for sharing!
I tried petit fours today and what a disaster. I tried the Wilton Poured Fondant today and it did not work for me. I think I might try candy melts or something. I'm not sure what went wrong. I guess it's cake squares for me!!!
Thank you so much Euphoriabakery .... I'm definetly going to try to do them your way. My only question is do you not worry about covering the bottoms? Obviously the method of 'dipping' coats the entire cake.
Ok ... one more question - do you not need BC on the sides of the cakes as well? (icing after cutting them)
Thanks!
No- I don't worry about icing the bottoms. I just place them in a paper liner after the poured ondant dries and they sem to stay good for a few weeks this way. And no- you do't need to ice the sides in BC, that would take forever! The sides will not be as smooth as the tops, but that is not noticable once you get decorations on the tops and place them in a paper liner.
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