Viennese Whirls

The good thing about making all the technical challenges in the GBBO is likely to be the diversity of recipes and the opportunity to try something new.  The bad thing is that I'm likely to spend time making things I know I don't like.  When they announced that this weeks technical challenge was viennese whirls my heart sank, not because I thought they were difficult to make but because I've never liked the overly sweet commercial variety. Nonetheless it would be a bit weak to give up on week 2 just because I didn't like the product, so I spent a relaxing hour pottering around the kitchen and was quite pleased with the result.

Again I followed Mary Berry's recipe (http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/marys_viennese_whirls_96895) and this time didn't notice any mistakes!  The process is very straight foward, beating together butter and icing sugar before stirring in the flours and piping into rounds.  The biscuits that resulted were very crumbly and as expected tasted buttery and bland, the flavour of viennese Whirls is all in the filling.

As I have about half a dozen jars of homemade raspberry jam in the cupboard I didn't bother making the quick jam outlined in Mary's recipe.  My jam is somewhat less sweet than bought jam and I was hoping it would offset the overwhelming sweetness of the butter icing.

Making viennese whirls hasn't changed my dislike of their sweetness but making them gave me the chance to try something new and get some much needed practise with a piping bag.  Mr Vitty is enjoying them (and he doesn't object to my dislike of them - more for him!)