These biscuits are a little more tricky than others I have posted but well worth the effort. They are really light and crumbly, but beware, you will never be able to buy shop bought ones again.

A Viennese biscuit refers to the mix, which is low in sugar and piped into shape before being chilled, then baked. There is no egg in these biscuits making them vegan as well as dairy free.

I would recommend making them in small batches as if kept to long sandwiched together with buttercream, the biscuit can go  little soft. Alternatively, you can bake the biscuits then only sandwich a few at a time as buttercream will keep quiet happily in the fridge.

I made both Viennese fingers and Rosettes. The biscuit recipe is exactly the same, just change the shape when you make your template to whichever shape you prefer.

 

Ingredients:

 

8oz Dairy Free Margarine

3oz Icing Sugar

8oz Self Raising Flour

a few drops of vanilla extract

Vanilla buttercream  (for recipe click here)

50g Melted dairy free chocolate (for this recipe I used moo free)

You only need the chocolate for the fingers, not the rosettes.

 

 

Method:

 

I am a bit fussy when it comes to making sandwich biscuits. If they are not the same size/shape when I’m putting them together at the end I tend to get a little annoyed. So to help with this I make myself a template when making piped biscuits. 

Roll your greaseproof or parchment paper out flat. for finger biscuits draw lines on it about 3 inches long with a good distance between them. For rosettes, draw circles (i like to draw round a cookie cutter to get the right size). Then turn your parchment over so you can see the lines or circles through and use this as a guide when piping your biscuits. You will need to prepare this guide first as once your mix is ready you want to pipe it out straight away.

This recipe requires the margarine to be nice and soft so I usually give it 30 secs in the microwave before I start, to make sure its really easy to mix.

Cream together the margarine and icing sugar till its really light, fluffy and smooth. You need to make sure it will be smooth and easy enough to pipe later on.

Stir in the flour and vanilla extract and transfer into a piping bag with a large star shaped nozzle.

The picture shows a disposable bag however, I do not recommend this as I got through two of them bursting on me before I switched to my old fashioned cloth bag that handled the job much better. If disposable bags are all you have, make sure you don’t over fill them as that seems to make the problem worse.

Gently pipe the mixture over the template you made earlier to make sure they are uniform in size. for the fingers this is easy as you just pipe a single straight line over your template. For the rosettes, pipe a circle shape starting in the center.

 

 

Transfer the piped biscuits to the fridge for at least 30mins. I once skipped this step in my hurry and all I ended up with was flat biscuits that lost their shape, so please don’t skip.

Transfer to a pre-heated oven at 160 °C (fan) and bake for 15mins.

Once cool, sandwich together with the vanilla buttercream.

For the fingers, finish off by dipping the ends in the melted chocolate.

 

I really hope you have fun with this recipe. It is definitely worth the time and effort. 

Remember, once you have mastered a recipe, feel free to mix it up. You don’t have to use buttercream for example, you could sandwich them with a Jam or Curd. You could change what you dip them in. Let me know what you try in the comments below.