In between photo job, some work with a few ongoing projects, sunbathing, swimming and reading books - this weekend consisted of some serious baking projects. It's like an old on-n-off relationship I have with the oven. For weeks I can be really annoyed by the fact that I've recently been baking, and eating, three large cakes in the short period of just a few days. I then refuse to look at sugar or even think the thought of baking for some weeks when then slowly one day I feel it coming, the subtle yet exciting feeling that bubbles inside and encourages me to get back to the mood and concoct something delicious, some terribly calorie rich, sticky, fudgy, sweet things and BAM I bake like I never seen cakes before. That's basically what happened this weekend, I baked and baked and I ate and ate. Cookies, buns and homemade bread. I ate ten or eleven cinnamon rolls if I am not completely misremembering or got high of all the yeast I've been consuming - and it was incredibly tasteful while it lasted but now I'm definitely back to square one again. No more calorie bombs for me please. Not a single more cinnamon bun thank you very much. Some folks might've been born normal, others we are the all or nothing kind of people.
If you would like to enjoy a couple of delicious Swedish cinnamon buns though, here's the recipe:
Time to prepare: Around 2 hours. Cooking: 7-9 min. Makes a total of 30-40 buns.
Ingredients for the dough:
14 g (two teaspoons) dry active yeast. You could also replace this with 50 g (1,7 ounce) fresh yeast if you prefer.
5 dl (2,5 cup) milk
150 g (1 cup) butter
1 teaspoon salt
1 dl (1/2 cup) sugar
1 1/2 tablespoon cardamom
14 - 15 dl (6 cups) all purpose flour (normalt vetemjöl eller vetemjöl extra)
For the filling:
room tempered butter
sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon
And the topping:
1 egg
pearl sugar
Put the yeast in a bowl. Melt the butter and add the milk, heat to lukewarm. Now pour the mixture over the yeast. Add the other ingredients and work the dough. Leave the dough to rest under a kitchen towel for approximately 30min. Preheat the oven to 225°C/437°F.
When the dough has rested, divide the dough into two equal parts. Knead them lightly on floured counter until smooth and shiny. Roll each half of dough into rectangles. Flat and nice. Now brush the rectangles with butter and sprinkle it all with cinnamon and sugar. If you feel like adding a nutty twist to it all, add some ground almonds. Now you roll it all up into two cylinders. Nice and tight. Then take a sharp knife and slice the cylinders into rolls. Put them on a baking tray covered with baking paper or put each of them into paper cupcake wrappers. Then leave it all to rest again, another 30 minutes would do them good, maybe an hour if you got the time.
When they've rested and chilled out under the kitchen towel, you should go ahead and brush the risen buns with egg wash and then sprinkle some pearl sugar on top.
Put to oven, bake for 7-9 minutes. Make sure they don't get too much baked, dry buns are never ever a good thing. If you followed my advice you should have some absolutely divine little buns ready in just a short while. They're delicious. Wonderful. Especially are they scrumptious when enjoyed with a glass of ice cold milk. Enjoy! And please give me your version of cinnamon rolls if you use other interesting fillings or topping. Sometimes I made them the pizza version, I would cut out the sugar from the dough and fill the buns with tomato sauce, ground beef, onion and so on... but that's another story for another time.. /T
