Strawberry Viennese Whirls. I wanted to bake something a little more sophisticated for a delicious Easter holiday cream tea. For everyone to eat alongside some traditional scones, delicious chocolate cupcakes and a batch of individual mini pavlovas. Everyone associates the classic Victoria sponge and the flavours or strawberry and vanilla buttercream with afternoon tea. So, here is a recipe that adds those two flavours to my favourite melt in your mouth biscuits Viennese Whirls.
A little bit about Viennese Whirls
First, the Viennese Whirl is not in fact Viennese. Influenced by the Austrian Cafe culture and Spritzgebäck cookies they were invented in Britain. You make Spritzgebäck by shaping or extruding a buttery dough and baking it. They are often dipped in chocolate. Viennese Whirls are made piping a soft shortbread mix into rounds. Then after baking they are filled with buttercream and jam. Viennese fingers are piped strips of shortbread that are baked and dipped in milk chocolate.
Strawberry Viennese Whirls
The high amount of Jersey butter gives these biscuits a beautiful colour. but it does make the mix a little bit hard to work with . If you are working in a hot kitchen or cooking on a warm day chill the shortbread mix so it will pipe better. I have used some strawberry powder in my recipe for an extra flavour boost. You can buy it in large supermarkets or from cake decorating shops. Your Viennese Whirls will still be great if you cannot find it.
My Viennese Whirls top tip. I use a plain circular five-centimetre cookie cutter to mark circles on my baking paper with a pencil. These act as a guideline when you start piping out the mix to get a nice regular shape.
Strawberry Viennese Whirls
Equipment
- Four disposable piping bags
- Star nozzle
- Two baking trays
- Baking Parchment
Ingredients
For the biscuits
- 280 gr soft unsalted Jersey Butter
- 240 gr Self-raising Flour
- 60 gr Icing Sugar
- 30 gr Cornflour
- 1 tablespoon quality Vanilla Essence
- 15 gr dehydrated Strawberry Powder
- A few drops of Dark Red Food Colouring
For the buttercream
- 500 gr Icing Sugar
- 160 gr soft Unsalted Butter
- 2 tablespoons quality Vanilla Essence
- 50 ml Full Fat Milk
To finish
- 5 tablespoons Strawberry Jam
- Icing sugar to dust
Instructions
For the biscuits
- Preheat your oven to 400 F / 200 C / Gas Mark 7 and grease and line the baking sheets.
- Place the soft butter and vanilla essence into a large bowl and sieve in the icing sugar. Beat together with a wooden spoon until light and fluffy. Sieve in the flour and cornflour and carefully mix with a metal spoon. Don’t over work the mix.
- Split the mixture in half and add the strawberry powder and red food colouring to half and mix together.
- Place each half of the mixture into a separate piping bag and then cut large holes in the ends. Then squeeze both the mixtures out side by side into the third piping bag fitted with the star nozzle.
- Following the pencilled guidelines pipe the mixture onto the baking paper. Start on the side and work round to form the whirl building up in the centre.
- Place the finished whirls in the oven and bake for ten minutes until lightly golden. Carefully remove the trays from the oven and allow the biscuits to cool for a couple of minutes before transferring to a wire rack.
For the buttercream
- In a large bowl whisk the butter, icing sugar, vanilla essence and milk until you have a smooth buttercream.
- When the whirls are thoroughly cool spread evenly with the jam and buttercream and sandwich together. Dust with icing sugar and serve.
Notes
