Nº 35: Scandinavian-style cinnamon buns, revisited

There's a wholesome twist. Perfect Christmas breakfast.

Good morning,

Remember when I emailed you last March with a recipe for Scandinavian-style cinnamon buns? I’d developed the recipe after hours of research conducted over a monthlong stay in Copenhagen.

I told you back then that

The quest towards this recipe led me to several bakeries, libraries, and bookstores in Copenhagen and nearby Malmö, Sweden. Along the way, I enthusiastically tasted countless “buns”, “snails”, and “twists”—or boller, snegle, and snurrer (Danish), bullar, snäckor, and knutar (Swedish)—and gleaned tips from dozens of cookbooks (Thank you, Google Translate!).

Shortly after I shared my recipe, Danish pastry chef

Marie Havnoe Frank

(who’s now working on a cookbook, by the way: something to look forward to) informed me that she’d made the buns and her children had declared them “the best thing you[‘ve] ever baked”! It’s hard to imagine a better endorsement than this one from the Danish children of a pastry chef.

Ever since I settled on that “perfect” Scandinavian-style cinnamon bun recipe, I’ve wanted to adapt it into one that calls on fruit, rather than cane sugar, for sweetness.

As I wrote all of those months ago (of the original recipe):

If you know my cookbook, Good & Sweet, you may be shocked to see unsparing use of cane sugar in the recipe that follows. I felt it important, as always, to master the traditional recipe before developing a fruit-sweetened version. I’m confident there’s one of the latter in me, so stay tuned for it.

Well, thank you for staying tuned; It has finally paid off!

The obvious choice here was dates — in dried form for the filling and in powdered form (called “date sugar”) for the dough — as their gooey texture and molasses-y flavor harmonize spectacularly with the cinnamon, cardamom, and butter that permeate these buns. I knew from such recipes as my Babylonian Swirls (in Good & Sweet) that dates would make a luscious, spreadable filling.

If you’re interested in the nitty gritty of adapting the recipe, here are the

Key changes from the original recipe:

(New ingredients are in CAPS and eliminated ingredients are struck through):

• The filling:
  Original recipe: butter, sugar, brown sugar, almonds, cinnamon, flour
  Adapted recipe: DATES, butter, cinnamon

• The dough:
  Original recipe: flour, milk, butter, sugar, egg, yeast, cardamom, salt
  Adapted recipe: flour, milk, DATE SUGAR, butter, egg, ALMOND FLOUR, yeast, cardamom, salt

• The syrup:
  Original recipe (optional): water, sugar
  Adapted recipe: n/a (no syrup)

Finally, here are some recommendations for the week:

• My new recipe for the New York Times, “One-Bowl Lemon and Olive Oil Cake”, is now up. It’s insanely simple and uses a couple of unexpected ingredients that inch it towards the sublime. Here is a gift link so you can read it even if you don’t have a NYT subscription.

• The “Mars Inc. (the chocolate story)” episode of the Acquired podcast goes deep into the candy company’s history.

• Remember that my list of “keepers and eaters” (a.k.a. my gift guide) exists in case you need any last-minute suggestions.

Thank you for reading this. I hope you’ll try the recipe that follows! I’ll wish you very happy holidays now, in case I don’t talk to you again before them. Take care.

Brian

*Formal Assignment P.S. is for paid subscribers. It’s just $5 a month—or even less for an annual subscription.

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RECIPE: SCANDINAVIAN-STYLE CINNAMON BUNS, REVISITED
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What makes them sweet? Dates: Medjools in the filling and date powder (a.k.a. date sugar) in the dough. (For help finding ingredients, see my resources page.)

As they do in Denmark and Sweden, these cinnamon buns have a healthy dose of cardamom in the dough, but the sweet filling is all about cinnamon. Using dates to make the filling delivers, in addition to the fruit’s decadent brown sugar flavor, the benefit of a more substantial cinnamon jam that stays perfectly in place and doesn’t leak while baking.

This recipe can be made without a stand mixer. Just mix all of the dough ingredients together in one go, and get ready for a workout kneading by hand. To make the filling without a food processor, beat the dates to a pulp using a heavy (mallet-style) meat tenderizer.

This note about butter from my original recipe still applies:

You’ll notice that the recipe below calls for salted European butter. American butter is around 80% milkfat, while European butter is 82%. It may seem a trivial difference, but that much more fat makes European butter remarkably softer, more pliable, and richer. As for the salt content, Danish pastry chef Marie Havnø Frank confirmed that Danish baked goods are “always” made with salted (and preferably cultured) butter. If you happen to have unsalted on hand, just add 1/4 tsp of salt to both the dough and the filling.

Makes 16 buns
Active time: 1 hour
Total time: 3 to 4 hours

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INGREDIENTS:
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