Swedish Treat

Kanelbullar (or Swedish Cinnamon Buns)

So this recipe was given to me courtesy of my friend Mike Fergusson, who is a fellow Canadian living abroad. He is now located in Sweden and thought I would like to try my hand at this nice Swedish treat! So a big thank you to him for this delicious dessert!

He provided both an original Swedish recipe and a very helpful translation, along with a few awesome twists to try.

I have to say that this was a really fun recipe to make!

As this is a translated recipe the way measurements are given vary a little between ingredients, so read carefully!

I tried two different methods for twisting up the dough into buns, read through the recipe to see the two methods. Standard version is Step 10 and 11, Fancy version is Step 12.

Kanelbullar:

This recipe should make about 40.

I made 38 at 164 calories each.

Ingredients:

Dough

• 500ml milk
• 50g fast yeast, I looked up the conversion and this is 14g easy bake yeast
• 150g butter at (room temperature)
• 100ml white sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt (if using unsalted butter)
• Optional: 2 tsp crushed cardamom (can put this in for cinnamon or cardamom buns)
• 800-900g plain flour

Filling

• 150g butter (room temperature)
• 100ml sugar
• 2 Tbs cinnamon (you can change this to cardamom if you want to make cardamom buns, I made cinnamon)

Wash and Decorating

• 1 egg
• Pearl sugar, chopped almonds, or crushed cardamom and sugar (your pick!)

 

Preparation:

1. Warm milk to c.37 degrees, this should feel mildly warm on your finger.
2. Mix yeast and milk together in large bowl until fully incorporated.
3. In a stand mixer with dough hook combine the milk/yeast mixture with butter (cubed into small sections), sugar, salt and cardamom (if using).
4. Add c.800-850g of flour until mixture is just past the point of being sticky to touch. Save further flour for later. 
5. Work the dough for 5 minutes in stand mixer or 10 minutes if kneading by hand.
6. Cover the bowl with the dough using a towel and leave to rise for 30-40 minutes.
7. When dough has doubled in size, punch down and divide (I divided into two sections, but its up to you, it just makes it easier to shape).
8. Roll out one of the dough sections into a rectangle about 5mm thick. (About 35-45cm in dimensions).
9. As I divided the dough into two lumps, I added the half the amount of filling across the top of the rolled out dough.
   • To do this I spread half the butter over the dough.
   • I then mixed the sugar and cinnamon together and sprinkled half of this over the butter.
10. Roll the dough into a tight tube.
11. Cut into c. 20 segments (each c. 2cm wide) and lay flat on baking paper.
12. Alternative: Instead of following steps 10 and 11, you can do a pretty cool twisting trick that makes the buns look really fancy even though it is really easy. There is a video here:
    1. Take the flat dough and spread the filling as usual.
    2. Fold the flat dough in half.
    3. Slice strips along the dough c. 2cm wide (about 20).
    4. Take each slice and cut along the centre leaving a small section still attached near the fold. 
    5. Twist the two ends around each other until you form a twisted braid.
    6. Holding the folded end of the twist, wrap the tail around your finger in a spiral.
    7. Tuck ends under the bottom.
13. Cover the rolls with towels and let rise for 40 minutes.
14. Warm oven to 225-250 degrees.
15. Add egg wash over buns and sprinkle with your choice of decoration. I tried cardamom and sugar on some and sugar pearls on the other (I couldn’t find proper pearled sugar, so I used a cake decoration that was similar).
16. Bake for 5-10 minutes, until golden brown. The more elaborately twisted ones need an extra minute or two.           

 

These are SO delicious!!!!! Absolute success! Thanks Mike!!!!!