What a fantastic Finnish!

Ok, sorry about the pun … Really though, the Finns did not let me down!!!

Again, like with the Kanelbulle, the Cardamom makes a really nice twist to these buns. They are somewhat like a Cardamom flavoured Scone, not only because of the lashings of strawberry jam and cream, but also because they are only slightly sweet and a little bready.

There are no real hints or tricks to this one, except for, like with most yeast-doughs, it is advisable to leave yourself plenty of time to make these as getting your dough to rise may take longer than expected, depending on how warm your home is.
 
Here’s how I made them:

- 600 ml Milk.
- 6 sachets of Dried Yeast (7gm each).
- 150 gm of Granulated Sugar.
- 1 Kg Plain Flour.
- 2 Eggs.
- 10 gm Salt.
- 2 Tsp of ground Cardamom.
- 200gm Butter.
- Strawberry Jam.
- Marzipan.
- Whipped Cream.

• In a large saucepan warm the Milk and the Cardamom over a gentle heat.
• Dissolve the sugar and allow the milk to cool until it’s tepid.
• Pour the yeast in to the Milk and Sugar and allow to completely dissolve.
• Melt the butter and allow to cool slightly.
• Add roughly half the flour and milk well.
• Add 1 egg, mix well.
• Add rest of the flour and the salt and turn the dough out on to a work surface and knead.
• Bit by bit add the now cooled and melted butter to the dough whilst kneading.
• Put the dough back in the saucepan, cover with clingfilm or a cloth and allow to rise in a warm place until doubled in size (about 1 hour).
• Preheat the oven to 200C.
• Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper.
• When the dough has doubled in size, divide in to balls, roughly the size of a scone and place on the baking tray.
• Whisk the remaining egg and brush the top of each Laskiaispulla with this.
• Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes or until golden.
• When cool, slice the top off each Laskiaispulla, fill with Marzipan or Strawberry Jam, and plenty of whipped cream.
• Dust with Icing sugar.

Email me your photos of anything you bake from this blog and I’ll put them up!!! eukitchen@gmail.com

9 down, 18 to go…..

Can you say Laskiaispulla?!

After my first taste of something sweet based on Cardamom (see Kanelbulle), I’m hopping over to Sweden’s friendly neighbour to see how Laskiaispulla fare. I’ve always considered Cardamom to be a spice solely reserved for savoury food but over the past several weeks I’ve grown accustomed to the combination of this spice with sweet. This has mostly been due to visits to my local Swedish Bakery/Café Peter’s Yard, which I must mention again because they really have fantastic produce!

Laskiaispulla are basically a Cream Bun, made with a wheat and Cardamom dough, filled with Strawberry Jam or Marzipan and always plenty of whipped cream. It’s again similarly to the Kanelbulle a yeast-based dough so at the moment it’s going through the proofing process in my warm kitchen.

I’ll let you know how they turn out very soon!

10 out of 10 for Sweden!

Well….. Kanelbulle are fantastic. Essentially they are a Cinnamon bun made with a bready and not too sugary cardamom dough and really - they are just dreamy!

This recipe yielded 42 Kanelbulle, so lots of people got to try them and I got much approval from flatmates, friends and work colleagues. But that said they are relatively small buns so don’t be put off by the large quantity.

Nib/Pearl Sugar is the sugar used in Sweden to decorate these buns. It’s the same sugar used to decorate certain types of Belgian waffles. I would have made these buns sooner but found it relatively difficult to find the sugar until the lovely people at Peter’s Yard, http://www.petersyard.com/ Swedish Bakery donated me a bag of the stuff. If you can’t find this sugar, you can sprinkle any kind of sugar you like on top or slightly crumble up some white sugar cubes to give a similar effect.

Here’s how I made them:

• 450 ml milk
• 250g unsalted butter
• 1 kg Flour
• 300g Sugar
• 2 level tablespoons Cinnamon
• 2 level tablespoons ground Cardamom
• 5 sachets (7gms each) of dried yeast
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon Water
• Nib/Pearl Sugar or sugar cubes.

- Heat 300ml of milk and 150g of sugar in a large saucepan.
- Turn off the heat and add the 5 sachets of dried yeast to the milk and allow to ferment.
- Melt 100g of the butter with the remaining milk and the cardamom
- Allow to cool slightly and add to the milk/yeast mixture.
- Bit by bit add the flour to the milk mixture and bring together to form a soft dough.
- Lightly knead on a slightly floured work surface then return to the saucepan, cover and leave in a warm place until it’s doubled in size.
- Cream the remaining sugar and butter and cinnamon in a bowl.
- On a lightly floured work surface, roll the dough out in to a rectangle that is about 3mm thick.
- Spread the Cinnamon and Sugar mixture all over the dough.
- Tightly roll the dough in to itself like a spiral.
- Cut the dough in to 3cm slices and place in to cupcake cases (spiral side up).
- Arrange cases on a baking tray.
- Cover with cling-film and leave to prove again for about 1 hour or until doubled in size.
- Preheat the oven to 220C.
- Once the buns have risen, whisk the egg with 1 tablespoon of water.
- Brush the buns with this egg mixture and sprinkle nib/pearl sugar or slightly crushed sugar cubes on top.
- Bake in oven for 5-7 minutes.

8 down, 19 to go……

Next stop: Sweden.

For my next sweet I will be cooking Swedish Kanelbulle which are Cinnamon Buns made with Cardamom dough. In Sweden they are topped with Pearl/Nib Sugar which looks like the coarse sea salt that you have on top of pretzels. I’ve been keeping an eye out for this sugar but can’t seem to find it in any shops here in Edinburgh. However the lovely people at Peter’s Yard Café and Bakery donated me a big bag of the stuff so we shall have Kanelbulle very soon!

http://www.petersyard.com/

Hope you all had a fantastic Queen’s Day!!

Well it took three days, several attempts and it nearly didn’t happen but I finally made Tompoezen!! This is all largely due to the support and some translations from my lovely Dutch flat-mate! :D (Thanks!)

Tompoezen are two layers of puff pastry, filled with pastry cream, topped with a layer of simple icing (usually pink, but orange for Queen’s Day) and served with fresh cream.

I expected the puff pastry to be the most difficult part, but it turned out to be very easy although time consuming. The part I struggled with the most was the pastry cream. It took me a few tries to get it right and I very nearly threw in the towel and put this up:

With a bit of motivation and a good translation of this Dutch recipe on youtube; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lk9EVEsWvc which is worth watching to get an idea of how these are made, and is also quite entertaining even if you don’t speak Dutch: I finally produced a worthwhile batch of Tompoezen and learned how to make two bakery staples on the way.

I found a very good puff pastry recipe on this website which gave a really fantastic, delicious result! http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/restaurant/techniques/pastry.html Ignore any recipe that goes beyond butter, water, flour and salt as its ingredients. Making your own puff pastry is very time consuming, and the only real trick is to make it in a relatively cool room. You don’t need to make it in a walk-in freezer but don’t make it with the heating on and if you just so happen to have a slab of marble handy, refrigerate it and roll the pastry out on that. All that said, frozen puff pastry works perfectly well and is usually of pretty good quality, I just feel like I wouldn’t be learning all that much about cooking if I bought ready made ingredients.

The pastry cream proved to be the most difficult part for me to get right and took me three attempts to get it in the end but I eventually figured it out.

Anyway, here’s how I made the Tompoezen:

• 400gm Puff Pastry (homemade, chilled or frozen)
• 1 Litre of milk
• 200 gm White Sugar
• Vanilla extract
• 100gm Cornstarch
• 3 egg yolks
• 200 gm Icing Sugar
• Pink or Orange food colouring.

- Bring 950 ml of milk, 1 tsp of vanilla extract and 100 gm of white sugar to the boil and then turn it off.
- Whisk together 3 egg yolks, 100g cornstarch, 100g white sugar and 50ml of milk.
- Whisk the egg mixture in to the milk mixture and turn the heat back on.
- Keep stirring the mixture on a medium heat and allow to thicken.
- Turn off the heat and let it cool.
- Preheat oven to 200C.
- Roll out the pastry so it is about 3mm thick and cut it to fit a baking tray.
- Lay the pastry out on the baking tray.
- Pierce the pastry all over with a fork (this prevents the pastry from rising too much).
- Bake pastry until golden brown (about 10 minutes).
- Remove from oven and allow to cool slightly before cutting in to 4x7cm rectangles.
- Prepare icing by mixing 200gm of icing sugar with 2 tablespoons of water and some pink or orange food colouring.
- Spread a thin layer of icing on half of the puff pastry rectangles.
- Pipe a thick layer of pastry cream on to the other puff pastry rectangles.
- Place the iced layer on top of the cream layer.
- Serve with whipped cream!

7 down, 20 to go......