How to make Viennese Whirls

If you watched the Great British Bake Off last week, you'll have seen the group of bakers tackling Viennese Whirls with mixed results. I watched them myself, thinking that it looked pretty difficult. Actually, they are fairly easy if you tackle them with confidence! In today's post, I am going to show you how I got on with making Viennese Whirls using a slightly adapted recipe from The Hairy Bikers and give you some top tips for trying it yourself. So, if you are wondering how to make Viennese Whirls and want to have a go, keep reading!

Viennese Whirls are an entirely British creation that get their name from being inspired by Austrian pastries. They are biscuits, very similar to shortbread but with a much lighter texture. What makes them distinctive is the fact that they are piped biscuits in a swirl pattern, which are then filled with buttercream and jam. Usually the jam is strawberry, but you can use whatever your favourite is. I made half with strawberry and half with blackcurrant. Unlike other biscuit recipes, Viennese Whirls are made with corn flour and icing sugar, and, if done well, they should almost melt in you mouth.

There was a bit of trial and error involved when I made these Viennese Whirls. The trickiest parts of the process are the piping of the biscuit dough and then putting the filling inside. The rest really isn't a problem. My first tip would be that you need to get your butter out several hours before starting as, ideally, you want it as soft as possible.

I managed to make my biscuits fairly uniform when I was making them, with a few rogue ones. Luckily, even the slightly mis-shapen ones had matching partners, so they still looked good when they were put together!

For piping the icing, I used a small star icing nozzle, so I would have better control over the quantity going onto the biscuit, and I chilled the buttercream to make the biscuits more stable when assembled. I also found that less is more when it comes to the jam, and that it also benefited from being chilled.

For top tips on how to make your own Viennese Whirls, follow the recipe below.

For the Original recipe from the Hairy Bikers go to the BBC Food website: Hairy Bikers' Viennese Whirls Recipe