viennese chocolate dipped biscuits.

shopping list
♥ 150g icing sugar
♥ 250g unsalted butter, diced
♥ 330g self raising flour
♥ 50g cornflour
♥ 1 tsp vanilla paste
♥ 400g chocolate





so viennese biscuits... when i found out that for the "office bake off" i had to make either tarts, biscuits or cookies, at first i was insistent on making a trusty bakewell. a last minute change of heart meant i had my first attempt at making viennese biscuits, chocolate dipped of course. 

and here's how i did it...  

preheat the oven to 190 degrees celsius.
i began by sieving the icing sugar over the cubes of room temperature butter. trying not to make too much of a mess i then beat the two together until creamy and fluffy. then, i added in the flour and cornflour, followed by the vanilla paste. 

when i was happy with the texture of the mixture, i filled a piping bag with a medium star shaped nozzle. i piped the biscuits like below, though you could try anything really - maybe a swirl or tighter zig zag shape? lastly, bake for around 10-15 minutes keeping a close eye that they don't brown. i was really pleased with the underneath of the "bake" too so took a cheeky picture.

allow to cool as you prepare the melted chocolate in a bain marie. for this, you boil water in a pan on a medium heat, lay a glass bowl on top and fill the bowl with your choice of broken up chocolate. i would recommend a chocolate with high percentage of cocoa solids as other more chocolate bar style choccies contain lots of milk and tend to separate when melted. the one i used was technically a milk chocolate with 39% solids as i thought that was as low as i could go and still keep the chocolate taste quite creamy. i have an awful sweet tooth!

oh and in case you're wondering... i didn't win, i came second. but we all know the saying first the worse, second the best, right?