Today in Sweden, we celebrate a very important day - Cinnamon Bun Day! You really have to love a country that declares a special day day for a delicious treat. I'm not entirely convinced if this is a real day or a completely fabricated day as I suspect Tulip Day we had earlier in the year was, but I think any day is a good excuse to make a batch of delicious, traditional Swedish kanelbullar.




There is nothing quite as good as the smell of freshly baked buns in the house and these are wonderful and quite simple to prepare. Before giving the recipe, there are a couple of things to keep in mind.

One of the most common mistakes that people make when preparing the dough is that they use too much flour. Certainly, it makes the dough much easier to manage, but the buns will come out hard and quite compact. I think it's so much better to put up with a slightly sticky dough and have soft, light, fluffy buns instead.

Now, the other major mistake people make is skimping on ingredients to make them "healthy". Let's be honest here - you bake these buns to enjoy, so don't start replacing the flour with wholemeal or using light milk or being a miser with the filling - the buns need to be sweet and good.

Classic Swedish Cinnamon Buns

150g butter
500 ml milk
50g yeast
½ tsp salt
3/4 cup sugar
6 cups flour
3 tsp ground cardamon

Filling:
100g butter
2 tsp cinnamon
½ cup sugar

Topping:
1 beaten egg
pearl sugar or almond flakes

Melt the butter in a small saucepan, then add the milk and heat it until lukewarm. Crumble the yeast in a small bowl and stir in a few tablespoons of milk.

In a large mixing bowl, put in sugar, salt, cardamon and about three quarters of the flour. Add the yeast and buttery milk and mix well with either a wooden spoon or a mixer. You may need to add more flour (it's always hard to predict) but the dough ought to be soft and still a little sticky.

Cover with a clean cloth and leave to rise in a warm place for 40 minutes.

In the meantime, mix together the filling ingredients. Lay out paper patty cases on a baking sheet.

When the dough has risen, tip out onto a floured board and knead firmly. Roll out into a 12" (30 cm) square. Spread over the filling, roll up as you would a swiss roll and cut into rounds about 1 cm (½") thick.

Put each round into a paper case. Cover and allow to rise for a further 20 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 250C.

Brush with beaten egg and sprinkle over the pearl sugar or chopped almonds. Bake for around 8 minutes.

Cool on a wire rack, covered with a clean cloth. Enjoy with your morning tea or coffee!

If you want an illustrated version of this method, you can follow what I wrote in my post about the beautiful saffron buns that Lars-Göran made last Christmas.

Which reminds me - it's nearly that time again! Better add saffron to my shopping list - I like to be prepared.