How to make the perfect Viennese whirls – recipe | Felicity Cloake's How to make the perfect …

Whether you prefer swirls, S shapes or fingers, these piped biscuits filled with optional buttercream are sure to melt in your mouth

My friend Caroline, being half French, is rarely inclined to ask me for recipes, so it’s testament to the quality of the Viennese whirls we had at the Cake Fridge in Bixter a couple of years ago, during a very damp cycle tour of Shetland, that she has been relentless in her demands for me to recreate them. Many foods are described as melting in the mouth, but these really did.

These relatively plain biscuits are known as Spritzgebäck in German, from the verb “to squirt”, because they’re piped or pressed from a special cookie tool rather than cut or rolled. The dough is, as Ravneet Gill observes in her first 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 enough for a tea party, but easy enough to knock up, though the people at the Cake Fridge were, quite understandably, tight-lipped about their recipe.