Advent Saffron Buns

Saffron buns is an absolute must in Sweden during the holidays. It's strongly connected to Lucia (december 13) but is common all through December. You can buy them everywhere, but home made are generally better. However, saffron tends to really dry out ordinary yeast doughs, so you want to make sure to use lots of fat in the dough, and most people nowadays also use quark to make the dough extra soft and pliable.

This recipe is for round buns filled with almond paste, but the most traditional way is to not fill them at all, just make the saffron dough and then shape into various traditional shapes. Dagmar shows some on her blog.

These freeze very well, which is handy. I got the recipe from ME at Jungbo, and the only thing I've done is halving it (my Kitchen-Aid could JUST about take this amount) and I added some finely chopped almonds to the filling.

A word of warning. Don't even think about making these if you have issues with messy baking. The part where you're supposed to mix a fully risen dough with a very loose batter? Messy. As in, yellow batter ALL over the kitchen, on me, on the counter, on the cupboards, on the floor, on the cats, on the Kitchen-Aid... Absolutely everywhere. And make sure you read through the entire recipe before you begin - you want to be well prepared for this! But it's all worth it, so don't worry too much.

(Oh - and a dl means a deciliter, which is 1/10 of a litre, or 100 milliliters, ml.)

Advent Saffron Buns
Makes about 60

dough 1:
50 g butter
500 ml milk (2 cups)
50 g fresh yeast
1 tsk baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
12-13 dl flour (about 5 cups)

Melt the butter, add the milk and heat until it's lukewarm. Crumble the yeast in a large bowl (preferrably the bowl of your sturdy mixer) and add the liquid. Stir until dissolved, then add all the other ingredients, and work for about five minutes until you have a soft dough that doesn't stick to the bowl. Cover and let rise for about an hour.

dough 2:
1,5 g saffron
125 g butter, softened
100 ml white syrup (substiture corn syrup, that should be close enough. It's just sweet.)
100 ml (0.4 cups) sugar
1 egg
200 g quark
10-12 dl flour (4-5 cups)

Mix the saffron with the butter, syrup, sugar, egg and quark. This dough is to be mixed with the fully risen white dough, and the rest of the flour should be mixed in too. This is messy. Be careful. And don't add too much flour - the dough shouldn't be sticky, but still soft and pliable. Too much flour makes the buns dry and hard.

filling:
250 g almond paste (about 50/50 almonds/sugar)
50 g almonds, finely chopped
100 g butter
100 ml (0.4 cups) sugar

Mix into a rough, but evenly distributed paste.

decoration:
1 egg beaten with a few drops of water
flaked almonds

Prepare baking sheets with paper cups. Take a small piece of dough in your hand - about the size of a golf ball - and roll into a ball. Flatten and put a bit of filling on it. Shape the dough around it so you have a ball again, firmly sealed. Place, seam-side down, in a paper cup. Then brush with a little bit of egg and sprinkle over a few flaked almonds. Leave to rise for about 45 minutes.

Heat the oven to 200-225°C. (The lower temperature is for convection ovens.) Bake for 8-10 minutes until the buns are lightly golden, but not brown. Let cool completely before stashing in plastic bags in the freezer - but make sure you eat some right out of the oven!

The recipe in Swedish:
Adventsbullar