Wake and bake

Our daughter turns 17 tomorrow. She has requested tiramisù for her birthday cake, and I’m excited for the challenge. However, if I’m going to do it right, I need ladyfingers. And according to my Italian teammate, the ladyfingers have to be good. I asked him if I need to make the ladyfingers, or if I can buy them, and he said oh you absolutely don’t have to make them; even my grandmother buys ladyfingers for her tiramisù.

The thing is, his Italian grandmother lives in Italy, where good ladyfingers are buyable. In our small town in the mountains of Virginia, my supermarket doesn’t have any ladyfingers, much less good ones.

So making them it is. However. If you’re making your own ladyfingers for tiramisù, says every recipe I’ve read, then they need to be stale. I need to let them sit out for a day before using them in the tiramisù.

And what that means is that I will be baking ladyfingers this morning before work so they’ll be ready for the tiramisù tomorrow. I guess the wee hours is when bakers usually bake, right?