Viennese Shortbreads/Biscuits with chocolate buttercream filling

Hi all , how have you been? December has started and its time to bake some cookies. Here's an interesting bake that I made this week from a book called  "Hamlyn All Colour Cookbook" which showcases traditional British recipes right from soups to desserts. Its a pretty old book published in the 70's , but the pictures are absolutely amazing. After baking Hot Cross Buns last year, I dutifully flip through the pages every night deciding on which ones to try next. Finally decided to try out this Viennese shortbread cookies.
What interested me most was the method of making these cookies. Rather than rolling and cutting or making small balls, these involved piping out the dough using a Icing bag.

The original recipe is for Orange shortbread, but omitted them as I am not so fond of the citrus flavor in any baked goodies.

Ingredients:

1 cup All purpose flour
1 cup cornflour(white)
3/4 cup butters
2/3 cup confectioner's sugar, sifted
extra confectioner's sugar to decorate.

For the Buttercream:
 4 tblsp butter
1 cup Icing sugar
2 tblsp cooking chocolate, melted

Method:
Preheat the oven for 180C/350F
Sift the flour and cornflour(cornstartch) together into a bowl.
Cream the butter, icing sugar in a large mixing bowl until very soft and light.
Gradually beat in the sifted flour and cornflour.
Put the mixture in the piping bag fitted with a large star tube (6mm) and pipe out small circles, rosettes or fingers on an ungreased baking sheet.
Bake in the centre of the preheated oven for 15 to 20 minutes.
The shortbread should crisp without becoming too brown.
Leave to cool on the baking sheet.

Note:   Its very important to cream the butter and sugar until soft otherwise, when the flour is added, the mixture would be too stiff to pipe. Add a 1 or 2 tablespoons of milk or water if too stiff to pipe.

For the Buttercream:
Cream together the butter and Icing sugar for the filling.
Melt the chocolate on a heatproof bowl over a pot of boiling water.Let it cool down.
Add the chocolate and mix well. When the biscuits are cold sandwich together in parts with the buttercream, and dust the tops with sieved icing sugar.

I wanted to use the star tip for these as in the picture from the book, but mine was too small to pipe out the dough and thus ended up in circles. The biscuits were soft and buttery, not too sweet, very different from the regular butter or sugar cookies. This recipe is definitely a keeper.

The cookies filled up with chocolate buttercream..

.I know I went a little overboard on the chocolate filling but hey its chocolate...

The biscuits tasted good on its own, but the chocolate filling enhanced the sweetness of the biscuits as well as the taste. 

Sorry for the poor lighting in the picture but this is what I could get out of the gloomy dark winter weather over here  :)    Sending this off to Champa's Bake-off event at Versatile kitchen.

Bye and have a nice weekend.