What’s cooking in Sweden?
Cinnamon buns
Sabine is my colleague and friend. She is born in Paris, from Dutch parents, but her husband’s father is from Sweden. Since his family lives in Sweden, Sabine and her family travel there when they can. Their family lives in a remote location at approximately 20 minutes by car from Linköping. They live in a remote area by choice, surrounded by nature and they have their own sheep. Walking, talking, fishing and cooking together are their main quality time activities as a family when they are there. Sometimes, during school holidays, Sabine and her husband also have their children going to Sweden for a few weeks to spend time with their family and to resource themselves in this natural environment.
Sabine lives close to Geneva and has four children. She prepared the recipe together with her lovely daughter Marie.
Cinnamon buns are famous Swedish treats, and you will find different varieties of them in other Scandinavian countries, like Norway and Denmark. Join us on a journey to Sweden by having the sweet smell of cinnamon buns fill up your kitchen!
Ingredients:
- 1 kg of flour (+ some extra to cover the area you will roll the dough on so that it does not stick)
- 220 gr sugar (180 for in the dough, the rest is for later)
- 250 gr of butter
- 600 ml of milk
- 2 little portions of baker yeast (one portion contains appr. 5,5 gr)
- 1 ½ tablespoon of cardamom
- Cinnamon (lots)
- Powder sugar
How to prepare:
- In a big bowl, mix: 1 kg of flour, 180 gr of sugar, the cardamom and the yeast.
- Heat up 600 ml of milk together with 200 gr of butter cut in small cubes. Heat it only until 37 degrees celcius, you can mesure this with a kitchen thermometer if you have one, or otherwise just with your finger).
- Pour the milk and butter mixture in the bowl and mix everything up. Make sure you use a good spoon as it makes a heavy and compact dough (so for instance a thick wooden spoon)
- Cover it up and put it away (not in the fridge) to allow the dough to rise for at least 2 hours.
- After 2 hours, put some flour on wherever you will roll the dough. Take enough space and roll it out. Make sure it’s not too thick.
- Melt the 50 gr of butter that is still left in the microwave and distribute evenly on the dough.
- Sprinkle some sugar over it and then the cinnamon, a lot of cinnamon, like in the video.
- Roll up the dough towards you.
- Cut the roll in two parts and place it on a tray with paper for the oven.
- Place the 2 rolls as you want, a suggestion would be to place them like this:
- Then, cut the rolls with scissors.
- Every time you cut a piece you either push it a bit up or a bit down so that it looks braided in the end.
- Leave it again for 1 hour like this so that it can rise some more, you cover the tray with a clean kitchen towel on top.
- Pre-heat your oven at 220 degrees celcius. Then bake the Cinnamon Buns first for 12 minutes. After those 12 minutes you check whether it’s not getting too dark brown (if this is the case you can put a bit of tin foil on top. By pushing on it you can also feel if it’s still too soft for your liking, and whether it is baked through. Sabine and Marie left it for 18 minutes in total in the oven. Their family likes it most when it is baked, but still a bit soft. If you will leave it too long in the oven, it could become a bit dry.
- You then let the Cinnamon Buns cool off and in the meanwhile you can mix some icing sugar (powder sugar) with a few drops of water.
- Then decorate the buns to your liking.
Sabine cooked this recipe together with her daughter Marie, and I have easily been able to reproduce it at my home 😊 even though I had probably left it a bit too long in the oven. My children loved it, and so did I! Thank you for sharing Sabine and Marie!
Enjoy!
