Swedish "vanilla buns" - vaniljbullar

[laurenmilan]

I fell utterly in love with the "vanilla buns" made in bakeries across Sweden, I recently returned from a trip where I visited Bastad, Kristianstad, and Stockholm, and I would love to learn how to make these Stateside.

They're a delicate sweet yeast bread baked in a muffinlike shape, with vanilla sugar on top, and vanilla custard piped into the bottom. Can anyone give me some pointers please?

[ludja]

My info is only from googling; hopefully someone with more hands on experience will add something.

My antennae go up when I hear things like "cream" or "custard-filled" so I wanted to investigate. (Thanks for bringing this up; I learned something new).

Perhaps what you had are "semlor" from Sweden.

If you google this you can find a bunch of recipes that are more or less the same.

semlor recipe

One difference from what you described are that these are filled with cream (whipped) --mixed with crumbs from the hollowed out bun and also some milk and either marizpan or ground almonds.

They are originally a pre-lenten treat--i.e for "Fat or Shrove Tuesday". As in many other countries, though, lots of these treats are now eaten at other times of the year.

A bunch of other European-Catholic countries have similar pre-lenten fried pastries made from a yeast dough and then filled with jam or cream. In Austria they are "krapfen" , in Germany, "fastnacht", in Poland, paczki. I think at some time this was to use up items that were proscribed during lent like yeast, milk, eggs, etc.

Anyway--these versions with the marzipan sound awfully good to me!

[laurenmilan]

My info is only from googling; hopefully someone with more hands on experience will add something.

My antennae go up when I hear things like "cream" or "custard-filled" so I wanted to investigate. (Thanks for bringing this up; I learned something new).

Perhaps what you had are "semlor" from Sweden.

If you google this you can find a bunch of recipes that are more or less the same.

semlor recipe

One difference from what you described are that these are filled with cream (whipped) --mixed with crumbs from the hollowed out bun and also some milk and either marizpan or ground almonds.

They are originally a pre-lenten treat--i.e for "Fat or Shrove Tuesday". As in many other countries, though, lots of these treats are now eaten at other times of the year.

A bunch of other European-Catholic countries have similar pre-lenten fried pastries made from a yeast dough and then filled with jam or cream. In Austria they are "krapfen" , in Germany, "fastnacht", in Poland, paczki. I think at some time this was to use up items that were proscribed during lent like yeast, milk, eggs, etc.

Anyway--these versions with the marzipan sound awfully good to me!

These are excellent too, but these are not the same ones. The cream filling is a custard, much like the vanilla sauce served with Scanian apple cake.

It's shaped like a brioche, but has the custard piped into the cake.

[mdibiaso]

Here is the recipe in English for Vanilla buns: http://www.algonet.se/~gabor/kokbok/EnVanillaBuns.htm

and here it is in Swedish the name being vaniljbullar

http://www.algonet.se/~gabor/kokbok/SvBullar.htm

You can replace the 2 tsp of vanilla sugar with 1 tsp vanilla extract. Or make your own vanilla sugar. Get a vanilla bean, scrape it out (using the insides for another recipe), cut up the remain bean into 2 inch strips. Mix the strips with 1 cup of powdered sugar and let sit in an airtight container for at least 1 week before using. Will hold forever, and you can always add more sugar over time and fresh strips of bean shells.

Lycka till (Good luck)

[Bridgestone]

Definately not a semla (good guess, though).

I think what you are describing is something I guess would be called "vaniljbullar" (simply "vanilla buns"). You basically make a batch of all-purpose sweet bun dough, let 'em rise, use your thumb to make a dent in the top and pipe in some vanilla cream. Brush the top with an egg and heavy cream mixture (maybe 50/50?) and bake. When they are done, brush with eggwhite and sprinkle on some of the Swedish "pearl sugar" or, in a pinch, maybe dust with powdered or dip in regular sugar.

I'm reluctant to do an entire translation of the recipe I found on the net until an adminstrator tells me that it's o.k. Without that, make a brioche dough (it's richer then the sweet bun dough used over here but I'd imagine would still be good) and add a solid pinch of cardamon. If I remember correctly, vanilla cream is simply a heavily thickened vanilla custard. You can buy decent mixes over here but it's only better made from scratch.

If you find a recipe for cinammon buns or such then I'd imagine that could also be used as the base dough. You could also try filling with 50/50 vanilla cream and applesauce or a nice jam, perhaps!

Good luck and I'm glad you enjoyed the bakeries over here!

[laurenmilan]

I think what you are describing is something I guess would be called "vaniljbullar" (simply "vanilla buns"). You basically make a batch of all-purpose sweet bun dough, let 'em rise, use your thumb to make a dent in the top and pipe in some vanilla cream. Brush the top with an egg and heavy cream mixture (maybe 50/50?) and bake. When they are done, brush with eggwhite and sprinkle on some of the Swedish "pearl sugar" or, in a pinch, maybe dust with powdered or dip in regular sugar.

Yay! Bingo, that's exactly what I was looking for.

Thanks very much!