Taking Cinnamon Rolls to Finnish Korvapuusti

Posted on June 7, 2012

This is my first blog post. So I suppose, I should say something about me and about Cafe Primrose before I get into the details of this recipe. This is relevant to why we do what we do.

We are a young couple that got married 4 years ago in July. I come from Boston MA. I ended up meeting my match on the other side of the world in Scandinavia. Today, after living and visiting all over the world we call Vienna Austria home, at least for the next few months. We have been here now for several years. Soon though, like with everywhere else we have stopped along our nomad’s path it will be time to leave again. Going where the wind blows us.

My husband, and his family come from a region of Finland a few hours to the north of Helsinki, Finland’s capital. When I met my husband, he was a grad student working on PhD at Helsinki University. After some time together I got to meet his wonderful and accepting family up in Varkaus Finland. Which falls in the region commonly known as Savo Finland.

This, is something I make for my husband every now and again. It brings back pieces of home for him. It is very similar to something I grew up with myself in the USA.  We love our cinnamon rolls. Well, taking a cinnamon roll to Finland, is a pretty simple thing. My aiti and isa love this too, not just my husband. (aiti and isa, or mom and dad in Finnish.

 

So, here we go. Gather together your ingredients, you will need,

• 1/4 cup of organic unbleached granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 3 eggs
• 3/4 of a cup of buttermilk
• 1/3 of a cup soft organic butter
• 4 cups organic all purpose white flower
• 2 teaspoons of  dry yeast

 

We use a bread machine to make these things. It saves us untold amounts of time. We just add all the ingredients in the proper order to the bread machine pan, and we set it to the correct setting and it does all the work for us. If you are not however using a bread machine this recipe will still work great. You need to make sure you beat the eggs and that you start off by putting all the wet ingredients into a large bowl. You then add at regular intervals the dry ingredients until the dry ingredients are fully mixed with the wet ones.

When you have everything mixed either by hand in a bowl or by the bread machine in the bread machine pan,  prepare a surface that is lightly floured. We use a cutting board that we bought from a fabulous etsy shop, called  Old Furnace Woodworks. It is beautiful and organically shaped. We bought it while living here in Austria. A piece of home, for me. When I set up a stuff we love section, these boards are definitely going to be added. So, you have flowered your over sized extra large cutting board or surface, you are ready then to start rolling out your mixed dough! You gather it up and you lightly flour your dough and you roll it out till it is about 17 by 11 inches and as rectangular as you can make it.

Once your dough is a flat rectangle, add a filling spread, which is made by mixing,

• 6 tablespoons of organic unbleached granulated sugar
• 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
• 3/4 cup unsalted softened butter.

 

Once you have your cinnamon filling prepared, spread it with a spoon or a knife or a brush, over your flat rectangular dough. Make sure to leave about an inch and a half on both of the long sides clear and free of all cinnamon filling. Now, take the bottom of your flat rectangular dough and begin rolling it like it is a rug. When you reach the opposite side brush a little water onto the edge left without cinnamon filling so that you can pinch it closed. Now, your dough is no longer flat. It should look somewhat like 17 or 18 inch long snake that is quite fat and mushy and likely a bit messy also.

Cut your fat snake-like cinnamon filled dough, in straight lines along it. Make a cut every 1 and a half or so inches.  Place slices, spiral side up on a pan. (You may need to use 2 pans to get them all.) then cover them with a dish towel and allow them to rise for 1 hours. We typically cover them first with saran wrap and then follow that up with 2 dish towels to keep the dough warm and not subject to any drafty breezes that may hinder the rising process.  At some point during this time, you may wish to turn on your oven and preheat it to  350 fahrenheit. Once the hour for rising is up, put your sheet/s into the oven where they will remain for aproximately 20 minutes. Though I would start checking them very seriously by 15 minutes.

 

Then you let them cool.  while you make the drippy delicious sugary glaze, by mixing,

• 1/2 a cup of confectioner’s sugar
• 1 and a half table spoons of milk
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.

Once cool enough drip the glaze over your cinnamon buns and you are ready to eat them! This is the American style that I grew up with.

Ok, for Finnish Korvapuusti, we will back track to the point when we had our dough rolled up like a big fat messy snake. Instead of cutting our snake in straight lines every 1 and a half inches along it, instead, we will cut it in diagonals. So that we end up with something like a triangle with a flat upward pointing point.

 

Then, we push down on the upward pointed point and we squish it a little bit. It looks really nice the way the dough is when pressed down that way.

Then, instead of putting it spiral side up on the cookie sheet, we put it squished triangle side up. Then we allow it to sit for the hour just as we did when making cinnamon buns American style.  We preheat the oven just as for american style cinnamon buns, and when the korvapuusti, is done sitting for an hour we sprinkle a bit of  pearl sugar over the top of them and we place them in the oven and we wait just as we would for the American Cinnamon roll.  There is no need to make any glaze as it already is covered in a sprinkling of pearl sugar.  Once it is out of the oven you let it cool and you serve to all your Finnish friends or any guest you may be cooking for.  These are highly enjoyable. Almost as good as Finnish Munkki. But that is a post for another day…. Should my readers like to try it.