Ladyfingers
- Ready In:
- 27mins
- Ingredients:
- 6
- Yields:
-
12 cookies
ingredients
- 1 large egg, separated
- 1⁄8 teaspoon cream of tartar
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 1⁄2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour, dipped and leveled without packing
- 1 tablespoon confectioners' sugar
directions
- Preheat the oven to 375°F with the rack at the upper level. Prepare a pastry bag with a #7 (5/8 inch) plain tip; butter and flour a reflective 12 x 8 inch baking sheet; sift the measured flour onto paper.
- In a 3-cup bowl set in hot tap water, beat the egg white and cream of tartar to a soft foam with an electric hand mixer, then add the sugar and beat on medium speed to a very stiff meringue, with spaces left when the beaters are lifted out. Midway through the beating, add the vanilla extract.
- Add the yolk and beat it in briefly, just enough to blend it evenly.
- With a rubber spatula, fold in the sifted flour a fourth at a time, keeping it off the sides of the bowl where it can stick.
- Pipe out rounded strips of batter 3 1/4 inches long x 3/4 inch wide, spacing them 1/2 inch apart. Hold the tip of the pastry bag slightly above the pan, so the batter falls slackly and doesn't bunch up or bulge; to stop the flow of batter and minimize "tails," press the pastry tip down and then lift up sharply as you finish each strip.
- Sift on a layer of confectioners' sugar, sprinkling each ladyfinger twice.
- Bake 10 minutes, rotate the pan, and bake 2 to 4 more minutes, until very pale tan on top and firm to the touch. Cool on a rack.
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RECIPE SUBMITTED BY
I am a New York City attorney with over 40 years' serious-amateur cooking experience. My cooking is the antithesis of Mediterranean cuisine: I generally want a blended richness rather than a light freshness (a Strauss tone poem instead of a Telemann concerto, or cooking down jams instead of using liquid pectin). I value basic quality ingredients like vanilla beans or good butter, but have little use for such "in" things as brining, food processors, sun-dried tomatoes, or chichi chocolates that taste weird. I think Americans' tastes are being corrupted by a gross overuse of salt and lemon juice in recipes for just about everything. My favorite cooking is classic French cuisine, but I try to learn how to cook for myself any dish I've eaten that I want to be sure of having again in the future. Among my favorite cookbooks are Escoffier's "Le Guide Culinaire" in French, and Jacques Pepin's two early books on technique and method. (As for "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," it was a landmark when it appeared in 1961, and many of its recipes are still hard to beat; but a half century's experience has uncovered enough errors and misinformation to make it no longer as trustworthy as we all once thought.) Like any other repetitive activity, the actual mechanics of cooking can sometimes be a chore -- but the joy of eating the finished product remains undiminished!