Let me just begin this post by telling you that you don’t have time to make this. Ain’t nobody got time to make this unless you are currently unemployed, on vacation, or are a stay-at-home-something with no kids. If you meet one of those criteria and for some reason haven’t made this yet, then I think some serious soul-searching needs to be going on inside the little birdhouse in your soul.

Also, before continuing please give yourself the pleasure of listening to my new favorite Christmas song. Yes, I know it’s over. BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN IT’S DEAD.

For a while I’ve had the Joy of Cooking cookbook, but haven’t really used it that much. It kind of depresses me, but it’s just so much easier to open Pinterest or Allrecipes than it is to dig through actual cookbooks that in the end my laziness wins. Lately though, I have been experiencing a renewed vigor to conquer that cookbook. Erica has been allowing me to plan 2-3 meals a week using the Joy of Cooking, and things have been going splendidly  The reason she limits my meals is that generally one of the meals I plan is 2-100 times more expensive than the ones that she plans, and since we are going to be homeless in about a month (I am transitioning from 6 years in the Navy to a civilian life; as of right now I have no job lined up.) she figures it’s probably best that we don’t blow our savings on Beef Wellington.

However, New Years Eve is a special occasion and since we don’t really have any money, there isn’t a budget, so it has to go on the credit card, so technically my budget is the limit of the credit card, right? If you just got dizzy grab a beer and try reading that last sentence again. In the words of the Man in Black to my good friend Vizzini, “Truly you have a dizzying intellect.” So in the spirit of THAT, I am going to make Tiramisu from scratch. Now, what most people mean when they say “from scratch” is that they didn’t buy it at the store. You buy the lady fingers, the mascarpone cheese, get the expresso from starbucks, etc. and then you assemble it at home. What I mean, because really I am batshit crazy, is that I am literally making the lady fingers from scratch. I am making the mascarpone cheese from scratch. I am going to make really strong coffee in my french press to soak the lady fingers in. I am going to make Erica really mad at the mess I make with this undertaking.

The entire tiramisu took me two complete days to make, but it could be completed in about 12 straight hours if you are batshit crazy. I am dividing this undertaking into three separate posts so as not to be so overwhelming.

The Lady’s Fingers

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Serves	36 fingers
Prep time	45 minutes
Cook time	15 minutes
Total time	1 hour
Allergy	Egg, Wheat
Meal type	Dessert
Misc	Gourmet
From book	Joy Of Cooking

Ingredients

• 6 Large Eggs
• 1/4 cup Sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoon Vanilla
• 1 cup Sifted Cake Flour (Plus 2 tbsp,)
• 1/4 teaspoon Cream of Tartar
• Confectioners's Sugar

Directions

	The first thing that I made is the lady fingers. Joy of Cooking tells you to make the recipe for the French Sponge Cake, only instead of baking it in a cake pan you pipe it onto a baking sheet. Joy tells us that "French Sponge Cake, or Biscuit (bis-KWEE) is a classic air-leavened sponge cake used to make fancy layered cakes. This light, dry-textured cake is meant to be soaked with syrups before being filled with buttercream, mousse, or other filling."
	Make sure all of the ingredients are at room temperature, about 70 degrees. Why don't you go ahead and just preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Separate the yolks from the whites for all 6 eggs. Beat the yolks, sugar, and vanilla in a large bowl on high speed until thick and pale yellow (2-3 minutes).
	So here's the deal with cake flour: It has way less gluten (the protein found in flour) than all-purpose flour. Gluten is what makes baked goods have their structure. Bread flour has more gluten than all-purpose flour in order to give the bread dough the stretchy consistency needed to trap the yeast's bubbles and allow the bread to rise. Lady fingers are very delicate and light, much like their namesake. It is important to use cake flour for this recipe and not all-purpose flour. If you use all-purpose flour instead you will not have lady fingers, you will have dude fingers - and who knows where that guy's fingers have been.
	Sift the flour evenly over the top of the egg yolk mixture but do not mix it in. Now, the recipe has you use clean beaters and a different bowl for this next step. Since I just got a Kitchen Aid stand mixer for Christmas (Thanks Dave and Tonya!) and I make it my life goal to use it as much as possible, I transferred the egg yolk mixture out of the stand mixer's bowl and into a different bowl before I sifted the cake flour over it. Then I washed the beater and bowl to use for this next step.
	Using clean beaters, beat the egg whites and cream of tartar in another large bowl on medium speed until soft peaks form. Beat until the peaks are stiff but not dry. Now, Joy has you "use a rubber spatula to fold 1/3 of the egg whites "not quite thoroughly" into the egg yolk mixture," whatever that means, but i'm sure you could just gently mix a third of the egg whites into the yolk until they are almost well mixed. Fold the remaining whites in two additions.
	Grease and flour two large baking sheets.
	Scrape the batter into a large Ziploc bag with the rubber spatula and close the bag. Using scissors, snip off a corner of the bag to create a ghetto batter piping system (Joy says to use a large pastry bag fitted with a 5/8-inch plain tip). Pipe 4-inch fingers at least 1 inch apart on the baking sheets. Lightly sift the confectioners sugar over the fingers.
	Bake until golden brown, 10 to 15 minutes. Transfer the lady fingers to a rack and cool completely. Store in an airtight container.

Don’t you feel accomplished? Well, you shouldn’t. Stop patting yourself on the back – you haven’t even entered this nightmare yet. In part 2 you’re going to learn how to make some pretty amazing tasting mascarpone cheese, so don’t touch that dial!