One of the most popular exports of Scandinavian cuisine is the humble cinnamon bun. Sweet, sticky, aromatic and extremely moreish, the soft wheat bun is synonymous with home baking and comfort food. It’s entirely understandable why the cinnamon bun – or kanelbulle, as it is known in Sweden – is so easy to love. The addictive spices are guaranteed to fill your home with scents of Christmas and memories of the best days of your life at any time of the year. Buns don’t have seasons, they are for every week and are great to eat in the morning, mid-morning, mid-afternoon and in the evening. Very few people don’t like kanelbullar.
The addictive spices are guaranteed to fill your home with scents of Christmas and memories of the best days of your life at any time of the year.
In Sweden, 4 October is known as the Day of the Cinnamon Bun. On this day, people eat more buns than usual – and a Swedish tourist website claims that the average Swede consumes 316 buns of various fillings bought from bakeries (so not including any homebaked buns) a year. Buns are not only delicious, but also big business, both for bakeries and fitness centres.
In Denmark, cinnamon rolls sometimes mean Danish pastry cinnamon swirls, in which case they might be called kanelsnurrer – cinnamon twists. In Sweden and Norway, if the buns are twisted into a knot, rather than rolled, they may also be referred to as kanelsnurrer. Some people add nibbed sugar before baking, others add it afterwards, with a sugar wash. In Scandinavia, cinnamon rolls are never covered in sticky icing.
The secret to making excellent cinnamon buns is love. That sounds a little silly, perhaps, but it is actually true. This is why no two people’s buns taste the same – it comes from which recipe you use, how you mix the dough, whether you knead by hand or use a machine. People tend to start with a basic recipe, adding their own tricks and knacks of rolling or twisting. Over time, the recipe becomes their own and nobody can recreate it just the same way. This is also why Mamma’s bullar always taste the best.
Make Brontë Aurell's Swedish cinnamon buns:
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Swedish cinnamon buns (kanelbullar)
Extract from by (Aurum Press, an imprint of The Quarto Group, hb, $39.99). Danish-born Brontë Aurell is a food writer and co-founder of , a café and grocery shop in London.
