Swedish Cinnamon buns recipe

Tried Nordic Bakery's cinnamon buns and want to make your own?
Cinnamon buns or Kanelbullar as we call them in Sweden are easy to make at home. They taste best on the day of baking but can also be frozen and enjoyed later after a few minutes in the oven.
Here is one of my favourite recipes.

Fredrik Broman, Cinnamon buns

Swedish Cinnamon buns

Time: about 2 hours

Makes 25 cinnamon buns

Dough

• 25 grams yeast, fresh yeast seems to work best but if you can't find it two packets of dried yeast works as well
• 75 grams butter
• 2 ½ deciliters milk
• ½ deciliters sugar
• 1 pinch of salt
• 1 tea spoon of grounded cardamom
• around 7 deciliters flour

Filling:

• 50 grams butter
• ½ deciliter sugar
• 2 table spoons cinnamon

Glazing:

• one egg

With fresh yeast break it up in a bowl. Then melt the butter in a saucepan,  pour in the milk and heat it up to 37C, you can test this by putting your finger in the saucepan, if it’s the same temperature as your finger it’s about 37C. With dry yeast follow the instructions on the package.

Stir in a tiny bit of the milk and butter mix in with the yeast. Then add the rest of the milk and butter. Add salt, sugar and cardamom while stirring.

Add the flour and work the dough into a smooth and elastic dough. You should work the dough for a  least 7 or 8 minutes if you are doing it by hand.

Cover the dough with a kitchen towel and let it rise for about 45 minutes.

Set the oven to 225C.

Use a rolling pin and roll out the dough to a rectangular flat cake, about 20 cm x 50 cm and 1cm thick.

Once rolled out you can use a cheese slicer and slice the butter (make sure the butter is cold if using a slicer) all over the dough. The sprinkle the sugar and cinnamon on top. If you would like more filling just add more of the butter, sugar and cinnamon. Make sure you cover the dough evenly with the filling.

Roll up the dough and cut it in slices that are around 1 ½ centimeters thick.

Put some grease proof paper on a baking tray. To get that lovely sticky bottom of the bun, put bits of butter and some sugar on top of the greaseproof paper. Then put the buns on the paper with enough space in between each bun so they can rise. Cover with a tea towel again and let the buns rise again for about 30 minutes

Whisk the egg and glaze each bun with a little of the egg mix.

Cook in the middle of the oven for 8 – 10 minutes.

Enjoy! 

Fake baking at home...

I love cinnamon buns or kanelbullar as we call them in Sweden. I must have tried hundreds of different kanelbullar in various cafes but the ones you make at home yourself are still the best. Here in Dubai I came across a place called Cinnabon, no doubt very American and despite the ridiculous packaging and horrible fast food chain look of the shop these cinnamon rolls are actually really good.
The other day I found a package of make your own Cinnabon in Waitrose and decided that while it is too hot to bake properly out here I might try a pre made version for a laugh. It is the easiest thing, just peel off the wrapping and out pops eight perfectly formed cinnamon roll dough balls, shaped and ready for the oven.

Well, here's how I got on:

The 'tantalising' Cinnabon packaging, though not 100% sure about icing my cinnamon roll it looked sort of pretty.

Well I am not sure what to say... Hopefully they'll look a lot better once cooked!

Looking a little better but perhaps not very cinnamon roll like yet. Better cover them up in some of that icing!

A cinnabon cinnamon roll, with icing. Not too bad looking though somewhere underneath that icing is a dry looking kanelbulle hiding.

Final verdict. These cinnamon rolls have a funny bitter taste,  hidden well by the sweetness of the icing. I am very surprised to find that the icing is essential as otherwise the bun isn't sweet enough. I missed the gooiness of the cinnamon filling that you get in your normal homemade cinnamon buns and also in the Cinnabon shop. These pre-made buns have specks of dry cinnamon inside the dough, which tastes ok but makes it a bit dry.

All in all, best to get that yeast and flower out again to make my own. I will post my favourite recipe shortly including some tips of how to get that lovely chewy bottom of the bun right.