Finger biscuits

A recipe from cooking-ez.com

For 20 biscuits, you will need:

• 1 60 g flour
• 2 60 g potato starch
• 3 180 g egg white
• 4 120 g caster sugar
• 5 100 g egg yolk
• 6 icing sugar
• Total weight: 520 grams

Times:

Preparation	Resting	Cooking	Start to finish
25 min.	10 min.	15 min.	50 min.

Step by step recipe

• 1: Preheat oven to 180°C or 356°F.
  In a bowl, mix together, 60 g flour and 60 g potato starch with a whisk.
• 2: Beat 180 g egg white in then add 120 g caster sugar little by little to obtain a firm meringue.
• 3: Pour 100 g egg yolk over the meringue, then gently fold in with a soft spatula.
• 4: Sieve the flour-starch mixture on top.
• 5: And incorporate it, still gently with a spatula.
  Stop working as soon as it is mixed, there is no big problem if there are a few small pieces of meringue left here and there.
• 6: Spread out the preparation (diameter 1 cm) using a forcing bag on a baking sheet if possible covered with a sheet of cooking paper, in cylinders of about 2 inches (5 cm) long.
• 7: Once the whole baking sheet is set, sprinkle it with icing sugar.
• 8: Place in the oven without delay and cook for 10-15 minutes, checking for colouring.
• 9: Remove from the baking sheet while still hot, and cool on a wire rack.

Remarks

This recipe isn't as easy as it sounds, the difficulty is getting the biscuits to bulge nicely rather than being (too) flat. The key to success lies in steps 3 and 5 where you need to incorporate the meringue very carefully to keep the light side of the preparation. Take great care in this delicate operation.
The small history said that those biscuits was created in the 18^th century by the famous chef Antonin Carème, at this time chef of Prince of Talleyrand. The prince love to dip a biscuit in his glass of Porto wine every evening, so Carème make this long biscuits for him (I love those pretty stories).
According to Mado, in Quebec these biscuits are called "Doigts de dames" (ladies' fingers), which is rather more poetic.

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