I have never been so excited by a bun before! The plan was to make cinnamon buns for the upcoming cinnamon bun day, and I had some spare pastry cream in the fridge. I decided to make sunshine buns (buns with vanilla pastry cream) with half of the dough and dipped them later in raspberry sugar instead of just sugar. So perfect! The flavour, the chewiness, everything! This is going to be go-to bun for the upcoming year. I should have tried this before. But better late than never!
As I told you, the dough is the same as my cinnamon buns, and the pastry cream is the same as in my danish pastry. Go and make half half cinnamon buns and sunshine buns (Swedish solskensbullar) like me or choose these yummy buns for all of the dough! If you don’t have the freeze-dried raspberries, just dip in regular sugar.
Want to make a Swedish vanilla bun but without pastry creaam, try my popular vanilla buns with vanilla sugar instead,
Recipe for my favourite buns! Sunshine buns (vanilla buns) with raspberry sugar (Swedish solskensbullar)
- 50 g fresh yeast
- 4 dl milk
- 2 tsp grinded cardamom seeds
- 150 g salted butter, room temperature
- 1.5 dl sugar
- 1 tsp cardamom, ground
- 0.5 tsp salt
- 1 egg
- 10-12 dl flour
- 4 large egg yolks or 5 small
- 1.25 dl sugar
- 0.6 dl cornstarch
- 0.25-0.5 tsp vanilla powder (add more according to taste)
- 3 dl milk
- 25 g salted butter, room temperature
- 1 dl sugar
- 1 tbsp freeze-dried raspberries, grinded
- 25 g salted butter, melted
Pastry cream:
Mix egg yolks, sugar and cornstarch in a bowl. Heat the milk in a saucepan together with the vanilla. Bring to boil while stirring, and the turn the heat off. Add the egg mixture to the milk and whisk together everything until smooth. Heat again on medium heat stirring constantly until it becomes a thick cream. Pour the cream into a bowl and add the butter. Let it melt and mix. Put a plastic wrap on top and let cool and chill until you are going to use it.
Dough:
Crumble the yeast in a bowl and grind cardamom seeds finely with a pestle in a mortar.
Heat milk together with cardamom seeds until it is 37 degrees C (just increase amount of ground cardamom if you don’t have the seeds at home). Pour the milk and cardamom mixture over the yeast and dissolve the yeast. Add the butter (soft but not melted). Then stir in sugar, ground cardamom, salt and egg.
Stir in most of the flour. Be careful not to pour everything at once. When the dough releases the edges, you don’t need to add more flour. Too much flour means dry buns. Work the dough for at least 10 minutes until you have a smooth and fine dough. Let it rise under a baking towel for at least 60 minutes.
Making of the buns:
Line two trays with muffins cases. Take the dough and divide into 24-30 pieces. Make round balls of the dough and put in the muffins cases. Let rise under a towel again for 40 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. Fill a piping bag with the pastry cream and use the tip to make a whole in the middle of the bun and press out some pastry cream inside of the bun. You will see the bun extend in size while you do this. Bake for around 12-15 minutes depending on the size of the buns. They should be golden brown when they are ready.
Let the buns cool down for 20 minutes before you start adding topping. While waiting, you can crush the raspberries in a mortar and mix with the sugar. Melt the butter and brush it on the buns. Dip them directly in the raspberry sugar and take a bite of the most delicious bun ever!
I had some raspberries in the sugar because the flavour goes well with vanilla. If you really like raspberries, you can try to press in some fresh berries in the bun before you add the vanilla pastry cream!
