Making lady fingers

Making Lady Fingers

(Savoiardi in Italian)

Today I made Lady fingers, which is described as "rounded, oblong shaped light cookies"

 

This is the professionally made lady fingers from my book, which one thing to learn is not to get discouraged by the outcome of your products versus those of  master chefs.

Included within the book is the history of Lady fingers:
"Lady fingers were created by the chefs of the Dukes of Savoy to celebrate the visit of the king of France. Despite their Piedmontese origin, ladyfingers are often found in the artisan confectionery traditions of all the regions of Italy that were once under Savoy influence. Thanks to their crisp, spongy texture, they are also used in creamy dessert recipes."
(Grazia, Mario, and Academia Barilla. Italian Desserts and Pastries. Vercelli: White Star, 2014. Print.)

What this means: Lady fingers derived from trying to please the king of France with scrumptious desserts, but has become traditional for Italians. This shows that there is history behind recipes.

 

      Making the lady fingers:

Making this recipe was for the most part was pretty simple. First, start by preheating the oven to 400°F, it didn't take long to prepare so heating up the oven right away was a good idea. Then you were to sift the flour and cornstarch and put it aside. In a separate bowl, you were to mix the 3 eggs and yolk and add dashes of vanilla and warm honey. To me this looked weird  because there was no flour or anything more solid yet, so the goo was not very appeasing.

1. mm cute

After that, it was time to add and mix the flour-cornstarch combo along with the lemon zest, which looked a lot better.

2. more acceptable

Then the hard part, you were supposed to take this mix and put it in an icing bag and somehow make the perfect shape on baking sheets to get the perfect cookie. This was a struggle, with the mixture shooting everywhere and not at all making perfect shapes. I definitely did not take pictures at this part because my hands were covered with icing. Maybe I'm just a spaz, but no matter how hard I tried the icing/mix would not stop coming out of both ends. #chefjenny

Side note: Before putting it in, it was recommended to put confectioners sugar so it would harden into the cookie. (Bake 10-15 minutes)
And so with the icing situation, once again the overall presentation of my cooking was not very great.  

Overall result: The book states that it should make 30 lady fingers. My attempt made about 15. This may have been due to my odd shapes and spilling of icing, but I don't think this recipe is overall accurate for average Joes. I made two batches, and slightly overcooked the first one. 10 minutes worked best for me, but that depends on ovens.  

Tastewise: It was very sweet. I like the pop of lemon zest and vanilla. I did feel a spongey texture (in the batch that wasn't overcooked haha). I did not like them as much as I thought I would, even with the sweetness they were still a little too bland, like eating a "meh" snickerdoodle. Icing could've helped, like it did with the glazed hazelnut cookies.

gotta add that cringey photo of me looking like a rat

Questions for you: What cooking struggles have you gone through? What are useful fixes? Do you think presentation is a big factor? What should I make next?

merry christmas lol - jenny

book: Barilla, Academia. Italian Desserts and Pastries: Delicious Recipes for 100 Authentic Sweets. Vercelli: White Star, 2014. Print.