Italian sponge fingers (Savoiardi)
These sponge fingers are also known as lady fingers. They are sweet, crisp and light. They can be eaten as is with a cup of tea or coffee or used in other recipes, such as tiramisu.
Ingredients
Makes: 48
- 4 eggs
- 125g caster sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 115g plain flour
Method
Prep:30min ›
Cook:10min ›
Ready in:40min
- Preheat oven to 190 C / Gas 5. Line three baking trays with baking parchment. Prepare a pastry bag with a plain 1.25cm piping nozzle.
- Separate the eggs. Whisk the egg yolks with 1/2 of the sugar and all of the vanilla. Beat until very light coloured. This will take about 5 minutes.
- In a clean bowl beat the egg whites until they hold soft peeks. While beating, slowly add the salt and the remaining sugar until combined. Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the egg yolk mixture.
- Sieve the flour over the egg mixture and gently fold it in.
- Fill the pastry bag with half of the batter and pipe 9cm fingers, 4cm apart, in rows on the baking parchment. Continue with the second half of the batter in the same manner.
- Bake at 190 C / Gas 5 for about 15 minutes until firm to the touch and golden. Remove the paper and fingers from the baking tray and place on racks to cool. After cooling, remove fingers from the paper and use or store between layers of greaseproof paper in a airtight container. These freeze well.
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Lady fingers (Savoiardi)
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Reviews & ratings
Average global rating:
(63)
Reviews in English (37)
i had to make it in to cakes in the end because it wasn't thick enough and that was my second try - 30 Nov 2012
As I need a gluten-free diet, I made these with gluten-free flour. It worked fine, though as the other reviewer says, the mix spreads so instead of fingers I produced flattish sponges. They still tasted great, froze well, and made excellent tiramisu! I have now bought some eclair tins and hope that I'll get neat fingers using them. - 21 Mar 2013
Recipe says "soft peaks" - I made this and it wouldn't pipe, too soft. Next time I'll whisk whites to STIFF peaks, add sugar, then whisk to stiff peaks again (like with meringues), that should work. I should have read the reviews before making as somebody else already found this out! {i'm making them as a base for tiramisu, but also as a base for English trifle, like in Heston's recipe - they work really well in both these). - 14 Feb 2015
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