If you live in Norway, the winter is dark, with not much actual hours of daylight. The sun does not rise up and down, but across the horizon, slowly moving lower across the horizon each day til hardly any sun is seen for most of the day, til finally it begins to slightly rise each day across the horizon. Depending upon where in Norway you live, the actual day for this varies, but here it started maybe a week or so ago, but today is the traditional day to make the buns. So, today I´m making solboller. Sol is Norwegian for sun. Boller is Norwegian for yeast buns. So, loosely translated as sunshine yeast rolls.
WHEN TIME will ADD PHOTO OF NORWEGIAN homemade
Make the two parts, the dough, and the thick vanilla egg custard filling. Eggwash the buns, then fill an indention in the middle of the bun with some of the custard (maybe a TBS or so), then bake for about 10 minutes in a hot preheated oven, 200C. Can decorate with icing sugar glaze, or a lemon icing sugar glaze. Usually I think they´re fine with just the custard, but the lemon icing glaze is what I choose if I drizzle any of that also on to decorate.
Some people add tumeric for color, but I think it adds an odd flavour, and I never ever add tumeric. The yolks here are yellow enough to color the custard yellow, or if not, that´s fine. Tumeric imho ruins the flavour.
Vanilla custard:
Split a vanilla pod down the center, scrape out the seeds into a saucepan, and add the vanilla pod. Pour in 2.5 dl whole milk, and the same amount full fat cream. Heat to warm, do not boil or it will split the cream. Add 40 g cornflour to 90 g sugar, mix well, then add all this to the warming milk. Then add 4 whole eggs, one at a time, into the liquid. Heat to hot, but do not boil, and keep stirring. When this thickens, then turn off heat, take off the heat, and set aside. Take out the vanilla pod, quickly rinse off, then put in your sugar container, to make vanilla sugar.
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Yeast roll dough:
half liter whole milk, slightly warmed to body temperature
1.5 dl sugar
50 g gjær (fresh yeast cake/fresh yeast)
Add the milk, sugar and fresh yeast. Let sit til bubbly, then add
1 egg
2 TBS cardamom
optional other spice, I add a little fresh nutmeg, more fresh ground cardamom, a tiny bit cinnamon. The main spice is still cardamom.
Mix together, then add
130 g butter, melted (measure the butter, then melt)
Mix together
Then add slowly about a cup or so at a time, 600 g flour. I usually use either all plain flour or half and half plain white flour with whole wheat flour. Add enough that you make a dough that forms a ball, but is not too firm or dry, but not too sticky or wet. Add a bit more or less that the 600 g, what you need to make the dough the right consistency to make the yeast buns.
Let rise, about an hour til doubled in size, in a warm place lightly covered with a tea towel. Then punch down, and divide to make the buns.
Either make the solid round balls into buns, or form these into snakes and twist or roll into rounds, like if making cinnamon buns.
Either way, then push a bit of a hallowed out area into the center, where you will eventually put about a TBS of the cooked cooled thick custard. But before you add the custard, first make all the buns, make the slight hallow indention centers, then brush with an eggwash (a bit of beaten egg), then add the TBS or so of thick custard.
At this point you can also add raisins, or pecans, or both, which I often do. Let sit a few minutes to rise a tiny bit, then put the tray into the preheated hot oven, 200C, and bake for about 10 minutes. The color will be slightly browned, but not so much that the buns are hard, or burnt.
Let cool.
Optional, to now decorate with a icing sugar glaze. I usually do not do this, but when I do, I make the icing sugar glaze with fresh squeezed lemon (like for a pound cake glaze), and drizzle it on slightly in lines randomly across, or a large thin daisy outline shape.
Some people instead dust the top with powdered sugar. I don´t usually ever do this, as I don´t like icing sugar/powdered sugar much except on fresh hot beignets.
Enjoy the sun, and the solboller.
There are various recipes, and a few different names. This is my version of the recipe.
Another option is to sprinkle the top with coconut. I don´t usually do that either. Some places only have these at this time of year, but here the bakeries have something similar all year long. The homemade version is much better tasting, easy and quick to make, can be frozen for later, and costs much less! The kids like to help too, it´s a fun indoor activity, and great to teach math skills with the measurements, or converting the US measurements to the metric, etc too.
Will add photos, when I´m done baking and have time.
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Another version of solboller. A soft sugar glazed double pretzel from Vienna, Austria. Similar in Germany also. Both very good!
