Lemon Viennese Swirls

• Preheat the oven to 170c. Prepare 2 baking trays with baking parchment.
• Cream together the softened butter, icing sugar, vanilla essence and lemon zest until light in colour and fluffy (5 minutes with an electric mixer).
• Add in the remainder dry ingredients and whisk for one minute until well mixed.
• Scoop the dough into a piping bag with a large star shaped nozzle.
• Pipe the dough in a circular disk swirl approx. 5cm in diameter, ensuring a space of5cm between each swirl.
• Pop the trays in a hot oven at 170c and bake for approx. 10 to 12 minutes. They should still look pale with a little bit of colour on the edges.
• Allow the cookies to completely cool on the trays before placing on a wire rack.
• Divide the batch in half so that you have the tops separate from the bottoms.

For the buttercream..

• Cream the sieved icing sugar, softened butter and vanilla essence together for approx.5 minutes until light and creamy.
• Spread a little of the buttercream on cookie bottoms, topped with a little spread of lemon curd.
• Pop the tops on top of the curd and viola. Enjoy!

Variation

• You can omit he lemon curd and replace with raspberry or strawberry jam.
• Also, you can just replace the curd and buttercream and just use Nutella instead.

• 200g softened butter
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• Zest of 1 lemon
• 200g plain flour
• ½ tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp cornflour

Vanilla buttercream

• 100g softened butter
• 170g icing sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 100g lemon curd (any brand)