Pimp That Snack
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Vast-ennese Whirl

by Claire and Laura 13 photos Rated 74% 142 votes when voting closed

Ingredients
For each whirl: 40 ounces butter, 50 ounces flour, 10 ounces icing sugar
Plus: one jar strawberry jam and 12 ounces butter, 6 ounces icing sugar for the buttercream icing
We also purchased two pizza trays to bake them on.

Ingredients on the hob: two pizza trays, Be-Ro flour, sugar, strawberry jam and stacked blocks of butter

Approximate cost: £9.66 (plus £7.98 for tins)

The original Mr Kipling six-pack of Viennese Whirls, box opened on a kitchen trivet

Having scoured the Pimp That Snack site for something as yet unmade we decided to produce a pimped up Viennese Whirl. We decided to make this much maligned patisserie of the Austro-Hungarian royalty for our work’s Macmillan Coffee Morning – the world’s largest Viennese Whirl for the world’s largest coffee morning.

Cubed butter piled on flour and icing sugar in a large plastic mixing bowl

Firstly, we measured out the ingredients for one whirl and lined the tins with greaseproof paper.

We then got to work with Laura’s trusty hand-held mixer, creaming butter and sugar. This promptly started to whir alarmingly and smoke under the strain of beating this record-breaking delight.

Beating the butter into the flour with a hand-held electric whisk in a huge bowl

We switched to a wooden spoon. This proved tough work and we abandoned the spoon in favour of our hands.

Hands working the crumbly dough together by hand in a big metal mixing bowl

The flour was sifted in.and, after much kneading, it came together beautifully.

It was shaped in the tin and artistically fashioned into a whirl by Claire.

Raw dough spread across a whole pizza tray and scored with a swirl pattern

We then repeated the exercise to make another whirl.

These were baked at 150ºC for 1 ½ hours and we went out for fish suppers as they were cooking.

Both scored dough discs baking on two shelves inside the oven

They came out golden brown and looking scrumptious.

Bereft of a mixer the icing sugar and butter for the buttercream filling had to be taken home by Claire to be made with her mixer.

Too scared to construct it at home and transport it to work, we put it together in our staff room. Spreading the jam on one half…

One baked disc on its tray, spread thickly with strawberry jam

And the buttercream on the other.

Spreading buttercream across the second baked disc with a palette knife

The two were then sandwiched together.

The two halves sandwiched together, jam and buttercream squeezing out around the edge

Finished whirl dusted with icing sugar beside a ruler and one original-sized whirl

The beast measured 36cm across and dwarfs it’s smaller relation.

We planned to use it for “Guess the Weight of the Cake” competition, so took it downstairs to our print room to be weighed on the franking machine. It came in at 6.572kg (or 7.225kg with the tin).

So here we are at the Coffee Morning with our gigantic Viennese Whirl!

Two bakers standing behind a cake stall, the giant whirl on the table before them

The competition winner divvyed it up amongst staff, which led to stomach cramps for all, over the weekend.

Cut cross-section showing thick biscuit layers with jam and buttercream between them

Doesn’t that look appetising?

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