Korvapuusti; a wonderful cinnamon bun

You know, sometimes you just want to have something sweet and there are not that many things that can top korvapuusti. The name "korvapuusti" actually has a double meaning. It of course means the cinnamon bun, but also if someone slaps you on the ear, that's also korvapuusti. So if someone wants to give you one, you might want to try and remember if you've been bad or nice to them. Kind of like at Christmas time.

You will need milk, wheat flour, butter, eggs, yeast and cardamom. To the so called filling you will need some more sugar and cinnamon. If you're baking more often, then these are quite basic ingredients so you might not even need to go grocery shopping.

Let the baking commence. Start by warming up 3,5 desilitres of milk and add 2 table spoons of yeast. If you're using the dry yeast, then the milk should be 42 Celsius. Mix the yeast with the milk and let it be for a second. Then add enough flour, around 8 desilitres, so that the dough will be still soft. Put a kitchen towel on the bowl with the dough and let it rise for half an hour. 

While the dough is rising, you can beat 2 eggs with 200 grams of sugar until its nice and foamy. Add 210 grams of warm butter. You can warm it up in microwave, but don't heat it up too much. Together with the butter you can add also 2 teaspoons of cardamom and 1 teaspoon of salt. Mix everything together. It tastes really good already at this point, so make sure you don't eat all the dough before you get to the actual baking.

Now that the dough has had enough time to rise, add the mix that you just prepared a moment ago and start kneading the dough. You'll need to add more flour to make the dough firmer. For this dough we ended up adding 5 more desilitres of flour, making the total count 13 desilitres. You might make it with less or you might need a bit more. You know that the dough starts to have the right kind of viscosity and consistency when it doesn't stick to the bowl and your hands like its life depended on it. Don't be afraid to get a bit rough with the dough first; it can handle it.

Next we'll need a space on the table where you can continue with the baking. Sprinkle some flour on the table and drop the dough on it. Start rolling it into a sheet of short. At first you can do this by hand, but later on you will need a rolling pin. Try to make the sheet quite square, 30 x 60 cm ideally. You'll need some more flour most likely, because otherwise the dough will stick to the rolling pin.

Let the sheet set for a moment and in the meantime you can melt some more butter and spread it over the sheet. Mix 100 grams of suger and 2 tea spoons of cinnamon and sprinkle the mix on top of the buttered sheet of dough and try to do it evenly. Roll the sheet into a roll and turn it so that the "seam" is on the bottom. Cut pieces from the roll that kind of resemble triangles. Ideally they'd be 2 cm wide from the narrower side and 4-5 cm from the wider side. Turn them so that you have the narrow side on top and press it down with your thumbs.

Set them on a oven tray, on a baking sheet. Make sure they have enough space to expand to all directions. Spread them with egg and melted butter mixture and sprinkle with pearl sugar. Put the buns in the oven that has been pre-heated to 200 Celsius and bake them about 10-15 minutes. Take them out and let cool enough so you won't burn your mouth and enjoy. They really are delicious.

Recipe:

3,5 dl warm milk

200 g sugar

2 eggs

210 g butter

2 tbsp yeast

2 tsp cardamom

approx. 13 dl wheat flour (not the finest sort you can get)

For the "filling" 100 g sugar and 2 tsp cinnamon

1 egg and 2 tbsp of butter to "egg" the cinnamon buns