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Lady Fingers or Naples Biscuits

8 ounces of powdered sugar. Quarter cupful of water--1/2 gill. 9 eggs. 10 ounces of flour.

Separate the eggs, the whites from the yolks, and set the whites on ice in a large bowl. Have the flour also in a cold place.

Put the sugar and water in a deep bright saucepan over the fire, add the yolks of the eggs and beat with a wire egg whisk till the mixture is warm but not hot--5 minutes. Then set the saucepan in a pan of cold water, and continue beating 15 minutes more till the mixture is become cold, thick and whitish and twice its original bulk. Whip the whites to a firm froth that will not fall out of the bowl up side down, and mix them lightly with the other and then stir in the flour, also without beating, and only stirred with a spoon sufficiently to hide it from light.

The above receipt is well worth learning as it is good for a great variety of Italian cakes and will not have to be repeated here, except as we shall show another way of doing the same thing.

To form the lady-fingers put some of the batter into the forcing sack having a tin tube in it from a quarter to half an inch in diameter, and force it out in finger lengths on sheets of blank paper, with an inch of space between each one. Sift powdered sugar plentifully all over them. Take hold of two corners of the sheet of paper (which may be of half newspaper size) and shake off the surplus sugar on to the table, and lay the sheet of cakes on a baking pan placed ready. Bake 8 or 10 minutes in a moderate oven, allowing the cakes to become no more than deep straw color.

To get the lady-fingers off the paper it is necessary to lay the sheet, cakes downwards, on a table and brush the paper over with water. The cakes will then peel off. Place them two together. The moisture will cause them to adhere.