Viennese whirls

Time: 20 minutes plus 30+ minutes baking and assembling

Difficulty: Medium

Serves: 12 biscuits

Ingredients

For the biscuits
250g soft, unsalted butter
50g icing sugar
225g plain flour
25g cornflour

For the filling
100g unsalted butter
Icing sugar
½ tsp vanilla extract
Jam

Week 2 of the Great British Bake off brought us biscuits. We’ve made iced biscuits and ginger bread in the past, so we went with the technical challenge of Viennese whirls. They were relatively simple to make with only 4 ingredients and gave us a chance to practice our piping which neither of us have quite mastered yet! You can make the jam yourself but I wouldn’t really recommend getting help with that from your little ones unless they’re old enough to be trusted with boiling sugar.

The biscuits themselves were really nice and care of Mary Berry herself. I almost found them a bit too sweet with the addition of jam and icing though, but if you’ve got a really sweet tooth these could be for you!

Method

Preheat the oven to 190C / 170C Fan.

Prepare your baking sheets

Line 3 baking sheets with non-stick baking paper. Using a 5cm/2in round cutter as a guide, get your child to help draw 8 circles on each sheet of paper, spaced well apart. Turn the paper over so the pencil marks are underneath.

Mix the butter and sugar together

Get your child to weigh the butter (250g) then add to a mixing bowl.

Measure the icing sugar (50g) then add it to your bowl. Beat them together with a wooden spoon until they are light and fluffy.

Add the flour and cornflour

Measure the flour (225g) and cornflour (25g) into a bowl then sieve into your butter/sugar mixture. Beat everything together again until it’s well mixed.

Pipe the biscuits

Fit a piping bag with a medium star nozzle then spoon the mixture in. If you don’t have a piping bag you can spoon the mixture directly onto your baking sheets – you just wont get the same whirl affect.

Pipe 24 swirls (or blobs) inside the circles on your baking sheets.

Bake the biscuits

* If you’ve got a warm kitchen and the time, chill the biscuits in the fridge for 15 minutes before you bake them so that hold their shape better.

Bake the biscuits in the oven for 13-15 minutes. They’re ready when they’re a pale golden brown colour.

Cool them on the baking sheets for 5 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

For the filling

Get your child to weight the butter (100g) then add to a bowl. Measure the icing sugar (200g) out then sift it on top.

Add the vanilla extract (1/2 tsp) and beat with a wooden spoon (or electric whisk) until thoroughly mixed and smooth. Fit a large star nozzle onto your piping bag then spoon in the filling.

Assemble the biscuits

We laid the biscuits out on a board with the bases facing up then spooned the jam on one side. Spoon the butter cream icing onto another biscuit then sandwich together.