Sometimes you just need dessert before dinner.
Sometimes you just need to eat dessert before dinner. On some occasions, a big slice of cake is dinner. And that’s perfectly all right.
For this reason, I have absolutely no problem starting my recipe testing adventures with a dessert. If you like savory things and are reading this in the hope of getting practical dinner and lunch ideas—never fear! I have seven chapters’ worth of savory recipes for these moments and many others lined up and ready for testing. I just felt like starting with these Viennese Whirls!
I first saw this recipe when Mary Berry used it as a technical challenge on Great British Bake Off. She called them Viennese Whirls, but since then I have seen them called “melting moments” and “yo-yos,” depending on whether they’re being made in UK or Australia, whether they contain custard powder, and whether or not you decide to pipe them in elegant swirls or just roll them into balls and stamp them on top with a fork. Whatever you call them, the idea is the same: two melt-in-your-mouth shortbread cookies sandwiched together with American-style buttercream and fruit filling.
When I tackled this recipe, my biggest worry was whether or not I was going to be able to pipe them. On GBBO, the contestants had a difficult time getting the mixture to pipe easily. Mary Berry claimed that the trick was to make sure the butter was very soft and well-creamed with the sugar, but I—a piping novice—was still nervous. I had no desire to get a hand-cramp attempting to pipe a bunch of cookies. Also, I was concerned that the cookies would be overly delicate; the contestants on the show had broken a lot of their cookies trying to fill them. Maybe Mary’s recipe was not the easiest or most foolproof? Maybe there was a better one?
I decided to explore other baker’s recipes and see how they did it.
A dual search in google and personal cookbook collection revealed that Edd Kimber (winner of GBBO series 1 and one of my favorite British recipe developers) and Martha Collison (another GBBO contestant) also have recipes for the same type of sandwich biscuit. Their versions are both slightly different than Mary’s: they both add vanilla to their biscuit dough, and Martha Collison has a touch of milk as well. Edd’s version is also the only recipe that uses salt, a vital ingredient in any kind of baking, but one that many more old-fashioned recipes don’t include (why? Do they think it’s not important to bring out the flavor in sweet dishes, as well as savory?) All three recipes also use a different oven temperature.
My head was spinning with comparisons, so I made a chart so I could clearly see the differences and ultimately decide what I wanted to do.*
The first thing I noticed was that Mary Berry’s recipe is the only one that doesn’t use equal parts flour and butter. Her recipe also has less sugar and cornstarch, leading to a biscuit with considerably more butter, proportionally, than the others. I guess this would result in a more crumbly biscuit once it was baked. I was still worried about the cookies falling apart, so I decided to try a recipe with a higher proportion of flour, cornstarch, and icing sugar. I was worried about too much cornstarch, though—I didn’t want to taste it in any way!—and Martha’s recipe with the same proportion of cornstarch to sugar made me a little nervous. In the end, I chose to try Edd’s proportions and include vanilla and salt as he does. I also used his oven temperature, since I figured it was probably appropriate for his specific recipe.
Edd bakes his cookies in small balls with a forked pattern on the top. I was still determined to pipe my cookies, though: my mother got me a reusable piping bag and tips for Christmas and I was dying to bust them out. I left the butter sitting out on the counter of my kitchen, which is currently about 80 degrees—no joke, as those of you in NYC apartments with no central heating will understand!—and creamed it well before adding in the other ingredients. The biscuits piped easily, if not beautifully. Piping is clearly one of those skills where practice makes better.
Both Edd and Martha use passionfruit filling in addition to the buttercream. I don’t know you’d call passionfruit a British obsession exactly, but it’s very popular over there. I honestly have never had it, and I wasn’t feeling it. So I decided to follow Mary Berry’s example and filched a few tablespoons of my fiance’s raspberry jam to use as the filling. Yes, I used storebought jam. I mean, I had already piped cookies (for the first time!) and made my own buttercream. There are limits.
The cookies came out lightly golden and firm enough to fill without them crumbling. My fiancé devoured them. When I made them for a party a few weeks later, I looked up to see one of my friends sitting on my couch holding one in her hand with a single bite taken out of it, her eyes closed in absolute bliss as she chewed.
“Mmmmm,” was all she said.
Which was all I needed.
Enjoy!
Viennese Whirls
(Makes 8 sandwich cookies)
For the cookies:
100 grams softened unsalted butter (~7 tbsp)**
100 grams flour (~scant ¾ cup)
34 grams icing sugar (~generous ¼ cup)
16 grams cornstarch (~2 tbsp)
½ tsp vanilla extract
¼ tsp Diamond Crystal kosher salt
For the buttercream and assembly:
30 grams butter (~2 tbsp)
60 grams icing sugar (~scant ½ cup)
Splash of vanilla
Raspberry jam, to fill
Special equipment: hand blender, piping bag with star nozzle, baking sheet, parchment paper
Method
For the cookies:
Beat butter and icing sugar together in a bowl with a handheld mixer (you can also use a stand mixer, if you have one) until light, creamy, and very soft. This step is very important! If the butter isn’t very soft and creamy, you’ll never get the finished mixture through the nozzle of the piping bag. Fold in flour and cornstarch until it just comes together. Add vanilla and salt.
Using a spatula, carefully scrape about half of the soft dough into a reusable piping bag fitted with an open-tip star nozzle. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and pipe 16 round cookies 1 ½-inch in diameter onto the parchment paper, starting from the center and swirling outward. Try to make them exactly the same size and thickness (this will take some practice, but it’s important that they are as similar as possible so that they all cook evenly and sandwich neatly.) Chill the baking sheet in the freezer for 15 minutes or in the refrigerator for 30 minutes, until the cookies are firm to the touch. You can bake them immediately if you wish, but because the butter is so soft, they will spread before they set and lose their definition.
Bake at 325 degrees F for 15 minutes, until the bottoms are just lightly golden brown. You don’t want a lot of color, but don’t pull them out raw. They need to be fully cooked! Let cool for a few minutes on the baking sheet before removing to a cooling rack.
For the buttercream and assembly:
Beat the butter until very soft, then blend in icing sugar. Add vanilla. Refrigerate for a few minutes, until the cookies are cool enough to pipe.
To assemble the sandwich cookies, turn the cookies upside down on a clean surface and pair them up side-by-side (if there are irregularities in size, try to match ones that are similar in size).
Fill a piping bag fitted with an open star nozzle with buttercream (you can use the exact same on that you used to pipe the cookies). Pipe a ring around the edge of half of the cookies; fill the center with raspberry jam.
Place the matching cookies bottom side down on top of the filled cookies, making neat sandwiches.
*Although the initial recipes I found were for varying batch sizes, I scaled each one so that the butter amounted to 250 grams, and then scaled the rest of the ingredients in the specific recipe accordingly, so that I could compare them more easily. Nobody ever tells you that you end up doing a fair amount of math when you bake!
**Volumetric measurements are estimates based on general accepted equivalents. This recipe has not been tested with them.
Originally posted June 8, 2019.
Kommentare