Homemade Savoiardi - Because your Tiramisù has been missing these

It’s been a few weeks, but I haven’t left you here without creating new delicious creations in the meantime. You may have seen a few updates from me on social media, but my absence from writing was so that I could take time to sit back and take a few moments to educate myself and find ways to get more involved with the crisis of systemic racism that has been a problem for longer than it should be. I won’t go into many details on this post, but I will say that I will not be staying silent about this issue and I’ll be continuing to raise my voice on this and that Black Lives Matter. I will continue to educate myself, others, and stand up as we march on to defeat racism!

As the feelings of overwhelm came to a peak in these past few weeks, I needed to decompress and that is when you know you can most likely find me in the kitchen. As I’ve actively been working on my Italian Language skills, I’ve been reading a book by one of Italy’s top pastry chefs, Iginio Massari – better known as The Sweetman. Little did I know that he had made a series on one of my favorite Italian Receipe sites, Giallo Zafferano TIRAMISÙ GOLOSO di Iginio Massari, where he made his entire tiramisù form scratch – which includes these savoiardi. Oh my gosh, let me just say he makes things look so easy, or maybe it was just the great video editing, but I decided that this was going to be a way for me to test my culinary Pasticceria skills and dive into making this very Italian dessert.

The tiramisù came out really well – but the savoiari are something to write home about, or write to you all about – because that are a must make. Not only are they great in a creamy and delicious tiramisù, but they are just delicate and delicious on their own paired with an espresso in the afternoon or for colazione (breakfast) in your cappuccino.

Ingredients:

170g egg yolks – tuorli – *buy at least a dozen eggs for this re
1 tsp. of vanilla extract or 1 vanilla bean – Baccello di vaniglia 1
150g white sugar – zucchero – be sure to separate this into 100g and 50g as you will mix these in separately between your egg yolks and egg whites
150g egg whites – albumi
30g potato starch – fecola di patate
50g white unbleached flour – farina 00
Q.b. white sugar (for topping)
Q.b. powdered sugar (for topping)
Q.b. Vanilla Extract (for topping)

*buy at least a dozen eggs for this recipe or feel free to cut it in half to make a lesser batch*

Preparation:

Start adding 50g of sugar to your stand mixer or a bowl for your hand mixer.
Next add in your fresh vanilla bean or vanilla extract.
Next up is 170g of egg yolks to the mixer or bowl and then you will turn the mixer on high for 12 minutes. You want to make sure that the egg yolks become nice and fluffy and that there is a nice luminous sheen, almost like a silk finish to the mixture before you turn it off.
Remove the egg yolk mixture from the mixture and set aside. If using the stand mixer like I am, I don’t have the luxury of having two mixing bowls so I had to wash mine out in order to get started whipping up the egg whites.
Once your mixing bowl is clean and ready, add in the 150g of egg whites and start whipping on high.
Once you start to see little bubbles form and the color start to change to a whitish hue, add in 10% of the remaining 100g of white sugar. Add this little-by-little as the egg whites are whipping on high.
The egg white mixture is finished when you can remove your mixer whisk and the egg white mixture has a stiff peak that’s not runny or liquid.

I have NEVER got my egg whites whipped as much as I did here!

In a small separate bowl mix the flour and potato starch using a sifter or a whisk.
With the bowl of whipped egg yolks in front of you, grab a rubber spatula full of the egg white mixer and start to fold and combine, very carefully.

Little by little you want to start to incorporate the two mixtures while also adding a small amount of the sifted flour and potato starch.
The rubber spatula is the best at making sure the batter that sticks to the wall of each of the bowls is removed and that everything is homogenously mixed well.

After the egg yolk batter, egg white batter and flour mixture are comined, it’s time to fill your pastry bag (or Saccapoche) that has a circular tip at the end.
Prep your baking sheets with parchment paper (carta forno) and preheat your oven to 200 degrees C (392 degrees F)
Using your filled pastry bag start to make small strips of the dough being careful not to squeeze too much or too little. It took me a few tries to really understand how thick I wanted my savoiardi to be – don’t worry it gets easier!

After all of the savoiardi have been laid out on the baking sheets, take some white sugar and mix a little bit of vanilla bean or vanilla extract in it and sprinkle on top of your prepped savoiardi.

Lastly, on top of that, sift powdered sugar in a nice even coat and you are ready for baking! *The sugar on top is so that the savoiardi don’t fall too flat when they are in the oven*

Bake for around 10-11 minutes, but keep an eye on things – I found that with my oven 9 minutes was the sweet spot to not have any burnt bottoms and that nice golden finish.

And there you have it – fresh, pillow-y and soft savoiardi that are irresistibly good. It’s easy to see how such simple ingredients when combined and formed in a different way can create little masterpieces. Iginio Massari is a pastry chef that I admire and I really hope that once day I’ll get to travel to his Pasticceria in order to taste all of the wonderful things that he is creating. He has surely lifted my spirits and added a few new words to my Italian vocabulary during this time and I hope that these will lift yours <3

Let me know if you have any questions about this recipe in the comments below as I’m translating all of this from Italian for you. Also, if you want to talk, know that I’m here for you and we are all in this together – grazie mille amici.