Usually, my sweet cravings behave indirectly proportionally to the temperature – as it gets colder, my sweet tooth demands more attention.

The other weekend I really felt like bullar – Swedish buns – but couldn’t find the one recipe that had it all. Therefore, I worked with those that came closest, which were the ingredients and directions of Whollyvegan’s Swedish Cardamom Buns and the look of Mirela of Coralandmauve’s Zimtschnecken-Zupfmuffins.

They turned out so well that I made them for dessert when we had my best friend and her Kiwi husband over for a New Zealand-themed evening.

Also, they were really easy and straightforward to prepare. Since they are vegan (and therefore didn’t contain eggs) I didn’t have to worry about the dough waiting in the oven until we felt like dessert (which turned out to be quite a while after a huge pot of my pumpkin-mushroom risotto).

Makes approx. 10 muffins.

Ingredients

• 300ml lukewarm water
• 100g plus 1 teaspoon sugar (white or brown)
• 150g brown sugar
• 1 packet dry yeast (7g)
• 100ml cup oil
• 450g all-purpose flour (and some more if the dough gets too sticky)
• 50g solid coconut oil (or butter)
• Ground cardamom
• Ground cinnamon
• Salt
• 50ml milk

Directions

Put 100ml of lukewarm water in a large bowl and add 1 ts of sugar and the yeast. Let it sit for a few minutes. If the mixture doesn’t foam, start over with a new packet of yeast (like I did).

Now stir in 100g of sugar, oil, 250g flour, 1 ts of ground cardamom and salt, then gradually add the remaining flour and water.

Knead the dough until all ingredients are smoothly combined and the dough doesn’t stick to your fingers nor the bowl (if it does, add more flour).

Take the dough out of the bowl and continue kneading on a lightly floured surface for another 5 minutes or so. Again, add flour as needed.  The original recipe swears by the magic number of 150 turns – worked for me  🙂

Place the dough in a bowl and cover with a kitchen towel. Put the dough in a warm place to rest and rise for about an hour (or until it has doubled in size).

In the meanwhile, combine brown sugar, cardamom and cinnamon (approximately 1 ts of each) and coconut oil and mix them into a smooth paste.

When the dough is ready, punch it down to get out the air, then cover it again and let it rest for a few more minutes.

Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface again and knead gently a few times.

Roll out the dough with a rolling pin, evenly spread the sugar-spice-oil mixture and cut it into roughly 3 cm wide stripes. Put one stripe on top of a second, fold over once more and cut into approximately 5 cm long pieces. Put those into a muffin tin (I used 3 stripes per mould), brush them with milk and sprinkle them with coarse sugar. Please look at the bottom of THIS PAGE  for a more visual explanation. What I’m trying to convey will suddenly be a whole lot clearer 😉

Leave them muffins to rest for another 30mins (or for however long it takes until you’re in the mood for eating them).

Then bake in the oven at 180° for 20mins or until you think they are ready.

So good!

This is how they turned out visually:

Mr A says I need to work on my food photography skills but I really don’t have the time for taking beautiful pictures with a tray full of oven-fresh, gorgeous-smelling thingies in front of me.

You’ll excuse if I go eat now.