Viennese Biscuits

After spotting these in 'Something Sweet' magazine (issue 9) I just had to have a go. It's brilliant if you want to practice your piping.
I don't all ways buy this magazine however, this issue came with a free heart cutter which I just couldn't leave behind.
I'm not really biscuit person, I love cake and I once had an unhealthy obsession with cookies but this didn't stop me from having a go at something new.

Ingredients

225g butter (at room temperature)
50g icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
25g cornflour
225g plain flour
100g dark chocolate

Method 

As all ways I measure out all my ingredients before I begin 

• Preheat your oven to 180 
• Mix together the butter and icing sugar with a wooden spoon until light and fluffy.
• Add the vanilla extract and mix.

• Sift the cornflour and plain flour into the bowl and mix until all incorporated and the mix becomes thick.
• Insert a french star nozzle into your piping bag, you can pick these up from the shop (some are cheaper than others) and it doesn't make a difference if it's metal or plastic.

• Fill a large piping bag with the mix (or a freezer bag with the corner cut off). You can place the piping bag in a jug to help.

•  Twist the top of the bag and hold it between your thumb and index finger. Squeeze until some of the mixture comes out.

  

• Pipe a zigzag of the mixture about 4X 8cm for each biscuit onto baking sheets, leave a space in between as they will spread a little. I don't own  a baking tray (yet) so I turned over a roasting tin and used that instead.

As you can see the first ones I did were rubbish, then it got slowly better.

• Bake for about 15 min until very pale golden brown. Cool on a wire rack. Mine only took about 10 mins, this might have been because my oven has a fan.

•  The recipe shows you how to temper chocolate but as I don't own a chocolate thermometer I just melted it. I also had about 80% to 20% ratio of dark chocolate to milk chocolate but it seemed to work okay. I have talked about melting chocolate in my perverse post. 
• Once the biscuits are cool dip each tip of biscuit in.

 Be careful these little guys are delicate. 

• Place back on the parchment paper until ready. These can last for a week if kept in an air tight container.

It may sound odd but personal didn't like them. As I said int he beginning I am not really a biscuit person however, my work colleague and the boy loved them. 

'Light and crumbly just the way they should be' 

One thing I did like about these was I got to practice my piping, how much pressure is needed and at what speed I can go at with out worrying about my hand temperature making the mix stiff and unpipe-able.

So, if you are a biscuit person why not give it a go? Or let me know if you have found a recipe from 'Something Sweet' you like and have tried.

Happy baking

Ms B

xx