Viennese Whirls

This is the simplest and most beautiful recipe - all it takes is four main ingredients and you've got yourself a light, crumbly, buttery Viennese biscuit. Add in some jam and buttercream and you'll create a teatime classic - simply delicious! 

Ingredients:

Biscuits:

175g margarine
50g caster sugar
175g self raising flour
1tsp vanilla essence

Filling:

25g butter, softened
100g icing sugar
1tsp milk
Jam - whichever flavour you fancy but make sure its a smooth jam, like a seedless raspberry for example. You don't want big pieces of fruit in the middle of your whirls!

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 160 Line a baking tray with baking paper

2. Thoroughly cream together the margarine and sugar. Mix in the flour and vanilla essence until you have a smooth paste 

3. Spoon the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a large star nozzle (my favourite piping bags to use are these) and pipe rosettes on the baking tray. You could using a template here to get them all the same size, or you can just eyeball it, like I did here:

4. Place in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes. Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack

5. While the biscuits are cooling make the buttercream. First off beat the butter until it is really soft, then slowly add the icing sugar, mixing until its all incorporated. If the buttercream is really stiff, add a little of the milk to make it softer - you want a light, fluffy icing, with a spreadable consistency.

6. Take two cooled biscuits, spread a little jam on one and a little buttercream on the other. Push the two halves together - be gentle here as the biscuits have a very soft, crumbly texture. Enjoy one, or two, or three...

Variations:

Chocolate Viennese Whirls

Make as above, substituting a tbsp of flour for a tbsp of cocoa powder in the biscuit mixture, and a tbsp of icing sugar for a tbsp of cocoa powder in the buttercream. Sandwich using nutella in place of jam. Yum!