Ladyfinger Cookies

Ladyfingers! I made these awhile ago and just haven't had the chance to get this one posted - I had tried to find ladyfingers at the grocery store when I was preparing to make P.W.'s Tiramisu but failed to find any so realized not only would I have to tackle the seemingly intimidating task of making homemade tiramisu for the first time, I would have to add on the intimidating task of creating my own ladyfingers too! I went to my fail safe AllRecipes to search for a recipe that had received good reviews and found this one. The recipe ingredients seemed simple enough, and it wasn't nearly as traumatic as I feared it might be. These actually came together very nicely, and I felt very proud of myself when they were done - enough to give myself a good 'ol floury pat on the back for creating my very first batch of ladyfinger cookies! They were perfect for the tiramisu and my son loved them all by themselves and helped himself to several. They were light, spongy with just a touch of sweetness - I assume that is how they are supposed to taste and that is the texture I was going for, but if I am wrong I may be spared from ever knowing since I apparently will only see ladyfingers already embedded in tiramisu or if I make them myself!

Started with eggs, sugar, baking powder and flour!

The yolks and whites were separated into two different mixing bowls.

I used the Kitchen Aid to start on beating the whites until they fluffed up a little and had some stiffness to them while I worked on the egg yolks.

I began beating the egg yolks and sugar in a separate bowl.

I added the called for sugar to the egg whites and let that continue mixing while I stuck with the egg yolk mixture and hand held beater (as I was doing so, I wondered how I had survived all the years prior to getting my Kitchen Aid and realized I am LAZY!!) :D.

After about 5 minutes or so the original egg yolk mixture was looking like this!! Pale yellow and creamy, looks about right to me!!

The egg white mixture had turned into THIS gorgeous fluffy ball and I figured that was about right too.

I gently began folding in half of the egg white mixture to the yolk mixture.

I tried to stick with "folding" and not stirring and keep it as minimal as possible but still get an even mixture.

Once that was combined I added in the called for flour and continued with the "folding" method (internally freaking out that I was going to ruin the cookies somehow at this point if I "folded" wrong or stirred too many times)!

Once that looked well combined I added in the rest of the egg white mixture.

Resulting in a big fluffy bowl of light batter!!

This part did not go so smoothly for me, but I'll save you the messy details! I needed an "assistant" to hold a Ziploc bag for me while I tried to carefully scrape the batter into the bag all the while thinking that next movement was going to deflate the whole thing (you can feel how "fluffy" it is) and something I was doing must be wrong, wrong, wrong! After I got the batter in, I snipped the very end of the bag off (since I don't have a pastry bag, this actually worked well and you can just toss the bag at the end, easy clean up!)

Then I piped cookies onto parchment paper - aren't they cute?! I thought they looked adorable and thought this part actually went pretty well!

The first batch I baked at the shorter end of the time frame and they came out very lightly golden brown but were a little stuck to the parchment paper when I tried to move them to the cooling rack. The next batch I gave another minute or two in the oven, until it started looking lightly browned along the bottom edges of the cookies - those ones came off the parchment paper quite a bit easier!

Batter all used up!

This recipe worked great! It resulted in a bunch of cookies, perfect for the recipe I was using them for - they were light, spongy, with a nice lightly sweet taste and were pretty good by themselves but really PERFECT for the tiramisu recipe (they soaked the coffee/marsala mixture up beautifully)! I will definitely use these again anytime I make anything calling for ladyfingers in the future. It is a little bit daunting, but really if I was able to do it I know anyone can - you will feel proud of yourself when you sample one of these lightly sticky spongy cookies! Don't be afraid to give yourself a floury pat on the back too! :)

Recipe from AllRecipes

Ingredients
4 eggs, separated
2/3 cup white sugar
7/8 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line two 17 x 12 inch baking sheets with baking parchment. Fit large pastry bag with a plain 1/2 inch round tube.

Place egg whites in bowl and beat on high until soft peaks start to form. Slowly add 2 tablespoons of the sugar and continue beating until stiff and glossy. In another bowl beat egg yolks and remaining sugar. Whip until thick and very pale in color.

Sift flour and baking powder together on a sheet of wax paper. Fold half the egg whites into the egg yolk mixture. Fold in flour, and then add the remaining egg whites. Transfer mixture to pastry bag and pipe out onto prepared baking sheet. Bake 8 minutes.