Kanelbullar - Swedish Cinnamon Buns

School's out for the kids, and they will have lots of time to "fika" - take coffee/lemonade breaks - for the coming six weeks. That means they need something sweet to eat with the lemonade.

I decided to make Kanelbullar, a variety of cinnamon buns I have only seen in Sweden, with the kids. All Swedish cakes I have baked since moving to the UK have been well received (a chocolate cake I made got sold at a Christmas fair before the sale officially started). I guess it is the novel taste that makes them interesting, hardly my competence :-)

You can buy them frozen at Ikea Food, but please don't. The Ikea ones don't resemble the homemade at all. To make sure that as many people as possible can enjoy them, I am sharing the recipe here (making 30-40 buns - normally lasting an afternoon).

The end result in a "Berså" bowl from Gustavsberg. It can't be more Swedish than that...

First of all - have a helper available. My 8-year old daughter helped me and was brilliant at mixing ingredients and eating the buns.

Ingredients:

Dough: 
Butter - 150 g
Milk - 1 pint/5dl
Salt - 1/2 teaspoon
Cardamom - 1 tablespoon pods (crush them to powder in a mortar)
Caster sugar - 1dl
Egg - 1
Yeast - 50g fresh or 3 satchels of Dried Yeast
White flour - 12-13dl or 800-900g

Filling:
Butter - 150g (room temperature)
Sugar  - 2dl
Cinnamon - 2 tablespoons

Finish:
Egg - 1
White granulated sugar (large granules)

How to do it:
Melt the butter in a pan (don't overheat it).

Add the milk, salt, cardamom, sugar and egg to the butter in the pan and mix.

Heat the fluid to 37° C if you're using fresh yeast, warmer if you're using dried yeast (my indicator for is to test with the index finger - if it feels neither hot nor cold, you have the correct temperature for fresh yeast. For dried yeast I just heat it a bit longer, until it feels warm but not unpleasantly hot.) Stir while warming so that you can feel the temperature properly.

Put the yeast in a big bowl (if you use fresh yeast remember to crumble it first) and pour the fluid over it. Stir to completely dissolve the yeast in the fluid.

Pour about 10dl of the flour in the bowl - not all at once - and blend it with an electric mixer. When the flour has mixed completely with the fluid and you have a nice even (quite wet) dough, add in flour until it gets a bit more firm. Ideally the dough is a bit wet, but not runny.

Sprinkle a bit of flour on the dough, cover it with a tea-towel, and set the timer to 45 minutes and wait for the dough to work to about double its size.

The dough after rising to double its size (it took exactly 45 minutes)

While the dough is working - prepare the filling. Put the room temperature butter in a bowl, add in the sugar and cinnamon and mix to an even texture and colour (no white bits from the butter). I use a spoon for that, but I am sure it is more efficient to use a mixer.

The brown goo is the filling after being stirred. It tastes much better than it looks.

When the timer has gone off, push the dough back into the bowl and divide it into two equal size portions.

One half of the dough on floured baking table 

Sprinkle your baking table lightly with flour, and roll the dough portions into rectangles about the size of a baking tray with a rolling pin. The thinner and larger you roll it, the more swirls you get (and you might need more filling for a really thin dough).

One half of the dough rolled to a good size.

Spread the filling on the dough.

The gooey filling spread out.

Roll the rectangles up from the long side.

The dough rolled up half way

Cut each roll into 15-20 equal width pieces and place the pieces with the cut facing up on baking trays with baking paper (or aluminium foil) on.

I use to cut the dough roll up in four equal size sections before cutting them to size. Then cut them into about 1/2 inch pieces. 

Place them, cut facing up on a baking tray and let rise again under a tea-towel.

Place a tea-towel over the baking trays with the buns on. Set the timer to 40 minutes and wait for the buns to rise a second time.

Whisk the egg for the finish.

When the timer goes off this time brush the buns with the whisked egg. Lightly sprinkle the granulated sugar over the buns after you've brushed them.

Brush the buns with eggs. Then sprinkle granulated sugar on them.

Shove the tray in the middle of the oven. My oven is an old-fashioned one, so I can only have one tray in it at a time, but if you've got a convection oven you might be able to do better.

Set the timer to 7 minutes - check that they look light brown (if they start getting black you're too late) before taking them out.

Get them off the tray and wait a few minutes - then enjoy! (My kids like to drink a glass of warm milk with them).

The end result (hopefully) :-)