Viennese Whirls & Fingers

These Viennese Whirls are my entry into this month's AlphaBakes Challenge hosted by Ros at the More Than Occasional Baker and Caroline at Caroline Makes. The randomly generated letter for AlphaBakes this month is 'V'...a bit of a tricky one. I thought I had a reasonable idea in making Viennese Whirls but it turns out the host Ros has also made them and she has also received two other Viennese Whirl entries!!! I'm pleased I made them though as it was something a little bit out of the norm to bake...and they tasted delicious!!

The recipe I chose for my whirls was by the Hairy Bikers and can be found on the BBC Food website. The resulting biscuits were light and crumbly...and oh so moreish with that taste of butter. The raspberry jam and vanilla buttercream really compliment the bake too. The only trouble I had with these was the piping out, an iron grip is needed  to get the mixture out of the piping bag. I also used a very large piping nozzle so ended up with rather mamouth whirls...not quite as neat as Mr. Kipling's!! :-)

In addition to the traditional whirls I also made some Viennese Fingers. For these I used a recipe from the Great British Bake Off winner Jo Wheatley. The recipe is in her new book 'A Passion for Baking'. I bought a copy in my local Sainsbury's yesterday and at first glance it seems to be a lovely little book and rather more comprehensive than I was expecting! These Viennese fingers also tasted great, although they were maybe a little too light and crumbly...I really wanted a little bit more bite...but still a winner! :-)

So there we have it my first entry for AlphaBakes this month...but hopefully I have a second up my sleeve (not literally...that would be a bit messy!). Watch this space!



Ingredients

250g soft butter
50g icing sugar
250g plain flour
50g cornflour
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Filling

100g soft butter
200g icing sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
75g raspberry jam

These were easy to make, to start line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper and preheat the oven to 190c/170c fan/gas 5. Then put the butter, icing sugar, flour, cornflour and vanilla extract into a food processor and blend until the mixture comes together and is smooth. It might be necessary to scrape down the sides a couple of times during the process.

This mixture can then be placed into a piping bag with a large star nozzle and piped into swirls. The only problem I had here was the stiffness of the mixture and trying to pipe it out of the bag...I kneaded it slightly in the bag to soften it up but I still needed extreme pressure to pipe it out! Bake for around 15 minutes until lightly golden. Once out of the oven, the whirls can cool on the baking tray for 5 minutes to firm up, before being transferred to a cooling rack.

For the filling, put the butter, sifted icing sugar and vanilla extract in a bowl and beat until light and fluffy. Place this in a piping bag with a star nozzle. To construct the whirls, spread raspberry jam onto one half and then pipe a swirl of buttercream onto the other before sandwiching together. Finish with a dusting of icing sugar.

* Original recipe by the Hairy Bikers on the BBC Food website