Retro Cakes and Cookies – Wendy Sweetser
retro-style cakes and cookies in this book by food writer Wendy Sweetser, author of 20 cookery books and a member of the UK Guild of Food Writers and the Slow Food Association.
The Chapters
Small Cakes, Bars and Buns
including Maids of Honor; Date, Apricot, and Pecan Sheet Cake; Lemon Bars; Chocolate Fridge Cake; Rock Cakes; Swiss Buns; Coconut Pyramids and Butterfly Cakes
Cookies and other treats
However, if you don’t have an extensive collection of baking books and
you want to try some classic UK and US bakes then there are some tasty recipes in this little book.
Date, Apricot and Pecan Sheet Cake, Ginger Nuts and Iced Orange Seed Cake.
and others have interesting information about the history of the different bakes.
Fingers
try.
- Preheat the oven to 160C. Make
the cookie dough: in a mixing bowl, beat the butter until soft and creamy. Sift in the icing sugar, add the vanilla and
beat again until the mixture is light and fluffy. - Sift in the baking powder, plain flour and cornflour, and add the milk.
Stir rather than beat everything together to make smooth soft dough. - Line two baking sheets with baking parchment. Spoon the mixture into a piping bag fitted
with a large star nozzle. Pipe the
mixture onto the baking sheets in lines about 10cm long, spaced well apart, to
make about 20 cookies.
- Bake in the oven for 7-8 minutes or until the cookies are pale
golden. Leave to cool on the baking
sheets for 5 minutes, before very carefully transferring to a wire rack with a palette
knife to cool completely.
- To make the chocolate icing, break or chop the chocolate into small
pieces, and place in a heatproof bowl. Stand the bowl over a pan of simmering water, making sure the bottom of the bowl does not touch the water, and leave until the chocolate has melted, stirring occasionally until smooth. - Re-line the baking sheets with clean baking parchment or foil. Dip both
ends of the cookies into the melted chocolate, let the excess chocolate drip back into the bowl, and place the cookies back on the baking sheets until the chocolate has set. When set, store the
cookies in an airtight container.
so handle them with care as you could break them when lifting them off the
baking sheets and dipping them in chocolate, if you are too heavy handed. On the other hand, eating the broken ones is the cook’s perk.
Farmersgirl Tips
You do need the extra milk to get the consistency soft enough. I used a large ‘potato’ or ‘cream’ piping nozzle as I couldn’t get the dough through anything else and ended up having to move the dough to a new piping bag.
The Viennese fingers are very delicate, I broke one cookie when I took it off the baking sheet, the chocolate was left on the paper and the biscuit came away in my hand! However, these were a big hit with young (my two year old grandson) and old (my 88 year old mother-in-law!) and everyone else in between. The taste and texture was exactly what I would expect from a Viennese Finger even though making them felt a bit like being on the Great British Bake Off!
Retro Cakes and Cookies by Wendy Sweetser is published by Cico Books at £9.99 and is available from www.cicobooks.com
I received a copy of Retro Cakes and Cookies to review, I was not paid for this review and all opinions are my own.
belleau kitchen says
oh my lord I do love a viennese finger… they remind me of growing up in the 70's… so posh we thought back then… you've inspired me to give them a go and thank you for the tip… great review x
Cakeyboi says
Viennese fingers take me right back! They look sooo good I can almost taste them 🙂
Janice Pattie says
Glad to provide a culinary time machine for you boys!
The View From The Table says
Oh my! Just the sight of these has whisked me back. I agree with the other comments too – they were only brought out 'for best'! I can almost taste them too 🙂
Elaine Livingstone says
not for me then, I am far to heavy handed and would probably end up with crumbs covered in chocolate
Choclette says
Those Viennese fingers look fabulous Janice. It's true, they were the height of sophistication I seem to remember and quite right too. I'm almost wanting to try them for myself, but I HATE piping and I'm not very good at it.
Janice Pattie says
Thanks for the comments. They were quite easy to pipe once I had the right size of nozzle and I thought I did rather well only breaking one!
Anne @ Webicurean says
Those Viennese fingers look really yummy, with or without the chocolate! I love retro recipes–I'm working on building my vintage cookbook collection.
Karen S Booth says
I LOVE Viennese Fingers and although the book looks lovely, I will stick to my beloved Be-Ro book for their recipe, but, I have to say that yours do look GORGEOUS! Karen