Swedish Vanilla Buns Recipe

As a Swede, fika is a big part of my life and help spread hygge all year around and these Swedish Vanilla Buns are a favourite in our house. They’re soft and buttery with the perfect amount of vanilla. But the real secret to make them super tasty is to give them a wash of melted butter as soon as they come out of the oven. Because most things in life get’s better with a little extra butter. Or as my husband says, a bus load of extra butter.

What is fika?

Before getting our hans buttery makin Swedish Vanilla Buns, lets talk about fika. For those of you who don’t know it fika is an essential part of life. It’s an opportunity to gather around with friends an colleague, have a preferably hot beverage like coffee or cocoa and a sweet snack. It’s something we do daily and most workplaces offer a time for morning fika and afternoon fika and meeting up for a fika is also a favourite acitivity to do with friends and loved ones. Or maybe for a first date. It’s like a snack but at the same time not, it’s so much about the culture and about taking a break. It can be long or short, at home or at a coffee shop. But what’s sure is that a Swedish fika almost alwats include coffee and almost always a sweet treat, quite often a Swedish cinnamon bun or another flavour of buns.

A taste of grandma’s kitchen

As I’ve already mentioned, Swedish Vanilla Buns are a favourite in our house. I’m not much of a fan of cinnamon but vanilla get’s me going. These buttery buns are my own recipe that is based on my grandmothers recipe but adapted to my own taste. They’re softer, more buttery and I add a home made almond paste to the filling. It stops the butter from flowing out and also gives a deeper flavour to the buns.

How to make Swedish Vanilla Buns

Making Swedish Cinnamon buns takes some time as the dough needs to rise twice but the process itself is really simple. You mix all your ingredients with a baking machine / mixer, let it rest, add your filling, shape buns, allow the to proof and bake them. The trick to good buns is having a good mixer with a strong motor. I use an Ankarsrum, a Swedish classic that’s popular all over the world, as it’s really strong. You can use a Kitchen Aid but take care to knead the dough carefully as Kitchen Aid motors aren’t very strong and Kitchen Aid themselves don’t recommend kneading doughs on high speed or for a long time. You can offcourse hand knead the dough if you wan’t to but it will take som time.

I promise though that no matter how you knead the dough for your Swedish Vanilla Buns the effort will be worth it. This recipe makes for quite a batch but I find it’s always good to make as many as you can. Swedish Vanilla Buns freeze very well and can be thawed quickly in the microwave. Or freeze unbaked ones and pop them straight into your oven to get freshly baked vanilla buns whenever you want!

Swedish Vanilla Buns

Recipe by thereseCourse: FikaCuisine: SwedishDifficulty: Medium

Servings

4

servings

Prep time

30

minutes

Cooking time

40

minutes

These Swedish vanilla buns are fluffy and filled with butter vanilla. Brushing them with melted butter as soon as they come out of the oven make them extra tatsy.

Ingredients

• Dough

• 2000 grams wheat flour + more for baking

• 1000 grams whole milk

• 400 grams sugar

• 300 grams salted butter, softened

• 100 grams fresh yeast

• 10 grams salt

• 2 eggs

• Filling

• 150 grams of sugar

• 100 grams of salted butter, softened

• 50 grams of almonds

• 15 grams of water

• 10 grams of vanilla sugar

• or one vanilla bean

• Brushing

• 100 grams of salted butter, melted

• 1 egg

• Oven stable pearl sugar

Directions

• Mix dough
• Add milk, sugar, butter, yeast and eggs to the bowl of your baking machine. I use an Ankarsrum, it’s Swedish made and has a strong motor that can handle the thoughest of doughs. Mix it all for a few seconds with your doigh roller or dough hook attachment.
• Slowly add a little flour at a time until it’s all incorporated. Knead the dough for 8 minutes on low speed and then 8 minutes on high speed. Do a gluten test to see if the gluten is fully formed. If not, knead until it is.
• Add the salt and incorporate fully by kneading for 2 minutes at medium speed.
• Cover the bowl and let the dough rise until it has doubled. Meanwhile, make the filling.
• Make filling
• Combine the almonds and 1/3 of the sugar in a kitchen blender. Mix until a fine powder. Some chunks of almond is okay if you want to feel the texture in your buns.
• Add the water to the mixture and mix until a paste forms.
• Add the vanilla, the rest of the sugar and the butter and mix until fully incorporated.
• Shape buns
• Inflate the dough and put in on a slightly floured surface. Roll into a big recangle abour 2-3 millimeters thick.
• Spread the filling evenly onto the doughm fold it in halv and cut strips about 1 centimeters wide.
• Roll strips into buns. You can shape them in differens ways and if you search google for how to shape a Swedish cinnamon bun you’ll get several tutorials.
• Butter a cupcake sheet and put one bun in each hole. Cover and the buns rise until they’ve almost doubled. You know that they’ve risen enough when you can press the bun and the dent fills up again.
• Preheat the oven to 180’C / 360’F and w.hisk the egg together. Brush the eggwash onto the buns, put some pearl sugar on top and bake them for 12-15 minutes or until golden. If unsure, check if the inner temperature is 94’C / 201’F or above.
• Pull the buns from the oven and brush them with melted butter right away. Release them from the cupcake pan and let them cool on a baking rack.
• Enjoy your Swedish vanilla buns slighlty warm and with a glass of milk.