How to make the very best Viennese whirls – recipe | Felicity Cloake’s How to make the very best …

My good friend Caroline, being part French, is never susceptible to invite me for recipes, so it’s testomony to the standard of the Viennese whirls we had at the Cake Fridge in Bixter a few years in the past, all over an excessively damp cycle excursion of Shetland, that she has been relentless in her calls for for me to recreate them. Many meals are described as melting within the mouth, however those actually did.

These rather undeniable biscuits are referred to as Spritzgebäck in German, from the verb “to squirt”, as a result of they’re piped or pressed from a different cookie device slightly than minimize or rolled. The dough is, as Ravneet Gill observes in her first e-book The Pastry Chef’s Guide, “really simple … the knack is in the piping”. Somewhere between a fairy cake and a cookie, they’re fancy sufficient for a tea birthday party, however simple sufficient to knock up, although the folk on the Cake Fridge had been, reasonably understandably, tight-lipped about their recipe.

The flour

Plain flour is the item for a brief, slightly than chewy texture – readers in the United States, Canada and different puts that develop high-protein wheat would possibly need to experiment with particular cake flour, however in the United Kingdom, bog-standard undeniable is perfect. The protein content material is related as a result of, when hydrated and kneaded with enough drive, those give dough its power and elasticity within the type of gluten. Great for bread, however the kiss of loss of life for a biscuit of this type, which bears extra relation to a shortcrust pastry (therefore their Italian identify, biscotti di pasta frolla).

To minimise gluten building, paintings the dough as low as conceivable after including the flour (although I’m no longer positive patting it in combination between two sheets of clingfilm, as Rose Levy Beranbaum recommends in her Baking Bible, is actually essential. Stirring it in brief in combination, as Susan Spaull and Fiona Burrell direct of their rival Leiths Baking Bible, feels as though it must do the process nearly as neatly, with slightly much less in the way in which of faff. Like Gill, each Mary Berry and Delicious mag exchange one of the crucial flour with gluten-free cornflour.

The sugar

Icing sugar is the secret for a clean, tremendous crumb, however an excessive amount of will reason the biscuits to unfold within the oven. Instead, stay the dough muscularly undeniable and upload sweetness within the filling, or simply give them a beneficiant dusting of icing sugar ahead of serving.

The dairy

As pastry chef Nicola Lamb explains on her Kitchen Projects baking Substack, “piped biscuits need to do a few things – first, be delicious, second they can’t spread too much when baking, and third, the dough needs to be soft enough to be pipeable. Unfortunately, points one and two are kind of mutually exclusive. When it comes to flavouring your biscuits, butter is the MVP. But butter, it melts and spreads. So, limiting the overall proportion of butter without losing flavour or texture is KEY.”

Her answer is so as to add a lot much less butter than one of the crucial different recipes. Berry, as an example, makes use of equivalent portions butter and flour; Gill, Delicious and Ben Mims’ e-book Crumbs fairly much less; and Leiths fairly much less once more – Lamb permits simply part the burden of butter to the flour, however browns it first, to pay attention the flavor. She makes up for the loss via including egg and milk to carry moisture and flavour to the dough with out burdening it with an excessive amount of additional fats (Leiths’ egg yolk and unmarried cream do a lot the similar process).

I like the nuttiness and wealthy golden hue of Lamb’s browned butter, however my testers choose the fewer Germanically precise-looking, however richer-tasting butter-heavy variations. Thanks to the loss of water hindering gluten building, alternatively, browned butter cookies will all the time unfold greater than bizarre ones, so I’m glad to yield and move part and part, as a result of style all the time comes first, particularly when precision piping isn’t actually for your skill-set within the first position. That approach, I will be able to blame the butter. If you’d choose a extra classically perfect-looking Viennese whirl, skip the browning step.

The flavourings

Gill makes use of custard powder (cornflour, salt, colouring and vanilla flavouring) to offer her biscuits color, however I’m depending at the browned butter to do this process for me, whilst I’ll save the vanilla for the buttercream filling I’ve borrowed from Berry. If you’re making plans to not fill your biscuits with icing or jam (or the Nutella or curd Gill suggests), or to dip them in chocolate as Delicious does, you might love to flavour the dough with vanilla, Mims’ lemon zest or the bottom hazelnuts within the Delicious take. The latter is especially just right, and I think maximum flooring nuts would paintings neatly right here.

The piping

Much more straightforward than it sounds – those biscuits are very forgiving, although, given the excessive butter content material, they do get pleasure from a temporary sit back ahead of baking, so they retain up to their form as conceivable within the oven whilst nonetheless tasting nice.

Perfect Viennese whirls

Prep 45 min
Chill 30 min+
Cook 15 min
Makes 20, or 10 sandwiches

300g butter, if making browned butter or 240g softened butter if skipping that step
55g icing sugar, plus additional for dusting
¼ tsp tremendous salt, or a just right pinch of coarse salt
250g undeniable flour
50g cornflour
1 tsp vanilla extract (if no longer the usage of buttercream filling)
A touch of milk (non-compulsory)

For the buttercream (non-compulsory)
100g softened butter
200g icing sugar
A pinch of salt
½ tsp vanilla extract, or flavouring of your selection
A touch of milk