Kanelbullar, part 2

Good afternoon! Hans is out of town and he needed the camera for work, so no food journal for today. I am going to do a post dedicated to the wonderful swedish treat, kanelbullar, instead! I call this kanelbullar part 2 because I posted a recipe for kanelbullar awhile back but I think that this recipe is way better than the last one. Kanelbullar are a traditional Swedish fika treat. Fika is similar to a coffee break. Usually, Swedes enjoy their coffee with a small treat and the most prevelant of these treats is definitely kanelbullar. Literally translated, kanelbullar means cinnamon buns. They are similar to our cinnamon rolls but without the excess sugar and icing, and they are a lot smaller. I learned how to bake kanelbullar when I lived in Sweden, of course. Hans’ mom showed me how to bake them the first time and after that they were super simple for me to bake. Hans loves them and when he requested some last weekend, I couldn’t turn him down since I love to bake so much 🙂 I have used several different recipes for kanelbullar. This recipe was one of the better ones that I have used. I got it off of the back of the Ikea pearl sugar box. Here it is:

Ingredients:
2 envelopes dry yeast
3 sticks butter
2 cups milk
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
6 cups flour
Optional: 2 tsp cardamom

*Filling*
4 tbsp butter, softened
5 tbsp sugar plus 1 tbsp cinnamon, mixed

*Glaze*
1 egg lightly beaten
pearl sugar

Directions:

Melt butter. Add milk and heat until lukewarm. Put yeast in a large mixing bowl. Pour butter/milk mixture and stir until yeast has dissolved, let sit 10 minutes. Add remaining sugar, salt, cardamom, and most of the flour. Work together until elastic. Place in a warm place and let rise for 40 minutes.

Place dough on lightly floured surface and knead using remaining flour as needed. Divide dough in half. Roll each piece of dough to form a square about 1/3 inch thick.

Spread each square with 2 tbsp butter and sprinkle with cinnamon/sugar mixture.

Roll each square to form a log and cut each log into approximately 24 pieces.

Place on a greased baking sheet, muffin pan or in muffin cups (I used a pizza pan and a regular pan because we don’t have a baking sheet yet, haha!!)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees fahrenheit. Let rise again for 30 minutes. Brush with egg and sprinkle with pearl sugar. Bake for 10 minutes until golden brown and enjoy!! I froze over half of the batch because these freeze very well and this recipe makes a ton of kanelbullar.

Just to show you how tiny they are compared to American cinnamon rolls, and I have small hands too!

Swedish kanelbullar:

Kanelbullar taste best when paired with a strong cup of coffee 🙂