Swedish sweets: Filled buns

Sweden isn't much of a doughnut country. Sure, you can find some at cafes or even the grocery store but they honestly stick out as misfits compared to all of the traditional pastries and treats.

Perhaps these traditional buns are why.

Whatever the reason, they are tasty and certainly worth the (fair amount of) hassle.

You'll need:



about 2 1/2 cups of flour (you'll need to judge the exact amount by the dough's consistancy), 3/4 cup whole milk, an egg, 5 tablespoons butter, 25 grams cake yeast, 3 tablespoons sugar. (Not pictured, 1 tsp salt)

If you've got a powerful mixer you can really just dump all of this in the bowl and mix for about 20 minutes (adding the salt after 10 minutes). Otherwise, melt the butter and heat the milk to 97 degrees F. Dissolve the sugar into the butter and milk. Add this mixture to a mixing bowl and dissolve the yeast in it. Dump in your flour and egg, mix to combine and knead until smooth and elastic.







After kneading, let the dough rest and rise until doubled in volume (about an hour).

Next, assemble your fillings and dump out the dough onto a prepared work surface.



I went ahead and did two fillings: applesauce and vanilla creme. The applesauce was made with ripe Antonopka (ripe in October, good eating, excellent baking and applesauce) apples from our tree (plus sugar and cinammon). You want an assertive and thick applesauce for these buns. I've documented making vanilla creme elsewhere.

Roll the dough out to roughly 1/4 inch thickness and stamp out 3.5 inch rounds.



Spoon about 1 tablespoon of filling onto each round. It's really tempting to spoon out too much. However, this will only cause headaches later so resist! Besides, there are worse thing in life than leftover vanilla creme...



Carefully fold the edges of each round up and around the filling. You can't get any of the filling on the edge or it simply won't seal. Pinch all of the edges together and seal as well as possible (although be careful to not strech the dough too thin on the filling side...). Something like this:









Place the filled and seal buns on parchment-lined baking sheets and let rest...



... and rise until nearly doubled in size (about 30 minutes):



Bake in a very hot (500 degree) oven for about 10 minutes. Keep an eye on them, though. These came out in the nick of time:



While still warm, brush the buns with melted butter and roll in sugar.



Do yourself a favor and eat a few while still warm!

The vanilla creme:



The applesauce:

For the recipe index:

Ingredients:

about 2 1/2 cups of flour (you'll need to judge the exact amount by the dough's consistancy)
3/4 cup whole milk
1 egg
5 tablespoons butter
25 grams cake yeast
3 tablespoons sugar
1 tsp salt
1 cup applesauce or
1 cup vanilla creme or
1/2 cup of each
1 tablespoon of melted butter
1/2 sugar in a bowl

Melt the butter and heat the milk to 97 degrees F. Dissolve the sugar into the butter and milk. Add this mixture to a mixing bowl and dissolve the yeast in it. Dump in your flour and egg, mix to combine and knead until smooth and elastic (about 10 minutes).

After kneading, let the dough rest and rise until doubled in volume (about an hour).

Next, assemble your fillings and dump out the dough onto a prepared work surface. Roll the dough out to roughly 1/4 inch thickness and stamp out 3.5 inch rounds. Spoon about 1 tablespoon of filling onto each round. Be careful to not spoon out too much filling!

Carefully fold the edges of each round up and around the filling. You can't get any of the filling on the edge or it simply won't seal. Pinch all of the edges together and seal as well as possible (although be careful to not strech the dough too thin on the filling side...).

Place the filled and seal buns on parchment-lined baking sheets and let rest and rise until nearly doubled in size (about 30 minutes).

Bake in a very hot (500 degree) oven for about 10 minutes. Keep an eye on them!

While still warm, brush the tops of the buns with melted butter and roll in sugar.

Oh, Lordy...as if I haven't eaten enough bad-for-me food in the last few weeks. And I have 15 lbs of apples that need to be made into applesauce or something...

Bridgestone, you've done it again. Those look amazing.

Thank you so much for your post! Those buns look fantastic, and I can't wait to try making them. I was wondering about the cake yeast. Do you use that because of its inherent qualities or rather because it's more commonly available/ used in Sweden? Do you think using a different form of yeast would adversely affect the recipe? Thanks again for your inspiring post.

All the best,
Jen

Thanks to both of you!

JenDath - I use cake yeast because that's what's widely available here. I'm certain that dry yeast will work fine. I'll post a conversion for you (if you need one) a little later.

Thanks again!

Those look excellent. I really need to try making a Bridgestone recipe sometime.

HI,

Thank you for getting my mind back on track: food! It couldn't come at a better time.

Have you had snow yet?

Regards,

Thanks again everyone!

JenDeth - From what I'm finding, I think you'll want two packages of instant dry yeast to substitute the 25 oz of fresh yeast this recipe calls for. Honestly, it's been so long since I've used instant dry yeast that I no longer have any idea if this feels right or not. Perhaps one package would be fine? I'm sorry but I'm not certain. Perhaps one or two of the board's bakers can help us out. A gut feeling of how much active-dry yeast for this much dough would probably be sufficient...

One other thing I've read re: active-dry vs. fresh yeast is that fresh yeast needs warmer temperatures to activate (so simply dumping everything into a powerful mixer as I've done may not be your best bet if using active-dry yeast) and that fresh yeast acts longer than active-dry. So, while I let my dough rise and rest a good 3 to 4 times (in various stages) perhaps you should hurry things up a little if using active-dry.

Cathy2 - No, no snow yet. At least not in the Stockholm region. But we've had a few heavy frosts and the lawnmower is now officially enjoying its well-deserved winter rest! However, it's cool, damp and dark enough already that the Bridgestone family is anxiously anticipating its Florida vacation in a few weeks!

Bridgestone,

Two days in a row I looked longingly at this thread while drinking morning coffee, one more day and I'll be making filled buns this weekend.

Thanks for another delicious and motivating post.

Enjoy,
Gary

Cook's Thesaurus(my go-to for substitutions) says to substitute one cake for each package or 2 1/4 teaspoons of active dry yeast, which sounds like exactly what you were saying, Bridgestone (that's two cakes you have there, right? The thesaurus doesn't give weight, but it says a cake is equal to 1 tablespoon)

Thanks again!

Gary - a hot-from-the-oven batch of filled buns maybe just your ticket out of the doghouse you're undoubtedly in for all of the attention you've been pouring over your new mistress...

Mhays - Thanks for your comfirmation/peer review! I was looking at Cook's Thesaurus myself. What complicated things (slightly) is that yeast is only sold in 50 gram (or, approximately the 2 oz cakes mentioned) over here.

Thanks so much for the additional yeast information Bridgestone (and Mhays)! I'll also double check it against my baking books as well. I've also heard that the dry yeast rises faster. I might do a mix of standard and rapid rise dry yeasts in order to smooth out the behavior the dough.

I'm curious, besides vanilla cream and applesauce, are there other traditional flavors that are used?

Thanks again!
Jen

Vanilla creme and applesauce are the versions that come to mind for me immediately.

However, any berry jam (blueberry, raspberry) ought to work just fine! Nutella perhaps?

Gnutella sounds like a good filling. Do you think it would work to make a thick chocolate sauce/gnash to use as a filling?

I finally had a chance to make these buns this morning. I used rapid rise yeast (slightly less than a teaspoon according to the conversion) since that was what I had at home. Also, since my family doesn't use eggs, I replaced the one in the recipe with a quarter cup whipped, silken tofu (a fairly standard replacement). Taking Bridgestone's advice above, the applesauce I made was thick and more strongly spiced. I used gala and honeycrisps since that was what I had at hand. For fun, I filled some of the buns with chunks of Belgian milk chocolate. Overall, I'm very happy how the buns turned out. The apple bun was very tasty and nicely balanced. The chocolate one was overwhelming, but in a good way. I did roll the dough a little too thin for some of them and that affected the second rise; they didn't increase in size as much after being filled as I would have thought. Also, I certainly need to practice my filling technique. While some of my buns were round, I certainly didn't approach the beautiful uniformity of Bridgestone's picture above.

Here's my applesauce bun.


Here's the chocolate one.


Thanks so much for the recipe Bridgestone! It's definitely something that I would make again. It was a lot less work than I thought it would be.

All the best,
Jen

Wonderful, Jen! Those look perfect.

Thanks for reporting back.