Swedish Vanilla Buns

Y'all need to get yourselves some Swedish friends. If you do, you will find yourself the lucky recipient of delicious gummy treats, and sehr lecker (German for very delicious) confections. Plus, you can listen to Abba and Ace of Base without irony or shame. We have these really fun Swedish friends in our Crew. Thanks to them, we have been able to enjoy some really great foods. We've had Köttbullar, Lussebullar, Swedish candies, and these wonderful vanilla-filled buns, Vaniljbullar. We've also bonded over our favorite TV Show, and what we feel is the best Döner Kebap spot in all of Berlin—so these are obviously my people. We made these the other week and goodness gracious, they were a delight. 

I realize it's kind of mean of me to post these on here, because some of the ingredients are specialty ingredients that you can't just pick up at the local grocery store, unless you live in Sweden. BUT, maybe that is what Amazon is for? Or maybe you can just try to find Swedish friends—and I'm really just promoting international relations and should be commended for doing so. 

Vanilla filled buns (Vaniljbullar)

Yields: about 20

Dough:
1 cup of milk
25 g yeast
75g butter
3 tablespoons sugar
1 egg
about 3 1/2 cups flour

Filling (makes about 1 1/2 cups of vanilla cream, but I would make a little extra):
1/2 cup dream powder
1/2 cup milk
2 egg yolks
2 tablespoons maizena
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla sugar
**this site has a recipe they use for the filling that doesn't use the powder
Topping:
Melted butter
Sugar

Making the Dough:

Heat the milk to 98° and dissolve a bit of yeast in it. Stir butter and sugar until smooth in a large bowl. Add the egg, the rest of the yeast, the warm milk and yeast mixture and stir. Add the flour and stir until it's a smooth dough. Let rise under a cloth until doubled in size.

Making the Filling:
Mix cream, milk, egg yolks, cornstarch, sugar and vanilla sugar in a saucepan and stir. Heat gently, stirring until the cream almost begins to simmer but do not boil. The cream will thicken. Take the pan off the heat and place in cold water in the sink or pour over the cream in a bowl (otherwise the residual heat in the pan to make vanilla ice cream becomes too hot and it can curdle).

Making the buns:
Roll out the dough into a large square. Cut out round holes, about 10 cm in diameter. Add a good sized dollop of filling and pinch the bun into a little bundle. Place the bun on baking paper with the seam facing down. Let the buns rise for an hour under a cloth. Bake in the oven for about 10 minutes at 450 degrees.

When the buns are cool, brush them with melted butter and dip them into sugar. Now EAT!

(You can freeze the buns before you brush them with butter and sugar, if you want to save them for a later date; or if you live by yourself and can't eat 20 buns in one sitting, no matter how badly you want to.)

vanilla cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

i needed to make some cupcakes for my friend's baby shower and she likes white cake and white frosting. so i looked all around to find a recipe that wansn't too airy or too dense. and i wanted to do a cream cheese frosting. so i found this recipe on cupcake bakeshop.

i adjusted it to fit the ingredients i had on hand.

3 Vanilla Cupcakes
20 regular cupcakes / 350 degree oven

3/4 cup (1-1/2 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1-2/3 cups vanilla sugar (i just used regular sugar)
2 large eggs, room temperature
2-2/3 cups flour
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 vanilla bean, seeds scraped out (i didn't have this so i just doubled the vanilla extract)

1. Beat butter until softened. Add sugar and beat until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
2. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until well combined.
3. Measure the flour, baking powder, and salt into a medium bowl and whisk to combine.
4. Measure out the milk and vanilla and stir to combine.
5. Add about a third of the dry ingredients to the butter/sugar and beat to combine. Add about a half of the milk/vanilla and beat to combine. Continue adding, alternating between dry and wet and finishing with the dry.
6. Scoop batter into cupcake cups about 2/3’s full. Turn oven down to 350 degrees and bake cupcakes for about 22-25 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.

For the frosting:
Beat 8 oz. cold cream cheese (not rock solid, but it means you can use it straight out of the refrigerator) with 5 Tbsp. softened butter and 2 tsp. vanilla until combined. Gradually add 2 c. powdered sugar that has been sifted after measuring. Continue to add more sifted powdered sugar until you reach a consistency and sweetness that fits your
taste.