Jacob Hansen is familiar with baking challenges. Besides mastering cake, bread, and petit four baking at Boulder’s high altitude, Hansen spent four months as a pastry chef in Antarctica, wowing scientists and contractors in sub-zero temperatures. But since the summer of 2020, he’s been navigating perhaps his biggest challenge yet: kneading and mixing his way through a global pandemic as the executive pastry chef at Rosetta Hall and running his own stall there, Petite Fleur.
Hansen took over last June when Petite Fleur’s previous owner left, and while running a dessert shop—and providing desserts for six other stalls inside the globally-inspired food hall—in the midst of the shutdowns and restrictions of COVID-19 might not sound like a cake walk to many, to Hansen it’s an opportunity to put his spin on the world’s greatest hits of baked goods.
“It allows me to play around with a lot of classic recipes from around the world and make them more modern and contemporary,” Hansen says of working at Rosetta. “I like creating things that bring people back to their childhoods and have them reminiscing about flavors they had.”
Case in point: Petite Fleur’s phenomenal doughnuts in flavors like cookies and cream, peanut butter cup, and matcha honeycomb. (Hansen also makes classics like maple glaze, lemon custard, and chocolate for the purists.) He’s currently experimenting with grown-up varieties like champagne and margarita doughnuts, because what’s more fun than a champagne doughnut? “It’s a fun thing to treat people, and I’m a huge fan of that,” he says.
There are also chocolates, truffles, bonbons, macarons, brownies, bars, and cookies. And many of the goods are all-inclusive, too, which means that gluten-free and vegan dessert-lovers will find something sweet at Petite Fleur. When the weather warms up, Hansen will put his creative spin on another childhood favorite, popsicles. He’s in the process of perfecting mango lime, strawberry sangria, blackberry yogurt, and piña colada pops, so stay tuned for those.
“It all goes back to what you ate as a kid,” Hansen says. “That’s what I base a lot of my ideas off of. Popsicles bring you back to those hot summer days and running for the ice cream truck. I ran some popsicle specials last summer and it was people in their 50s and 60s who enjoyed them the most. I’d watch them eat them and their faces would just light up. That’s what I strive for.”
The Sweet Spot
Visit Petite Fleur inside Rosetta Hall at 1109 Walnut St. from 11 a.m.-8:30 p.m. If you’re interested in creating your own array of goodies, call Rosetta’s catering department at 720-213-6742 or order online at rosettahall.com.
“I like creating things that bring people back to their childhoods and have them reminiscing about flavors they had.”
