How to Bake the Perfect Cinnamon Buns

Have you fallen for this Scandinavian classic or do your loyalties lie with the chelsea, cream or iced bun? And which other Nordic treats have you got a taste for?
I've got a bit of a soft spot for the sticky bun, a treat with a whiff of the Billy Bunter about it. These aren't the cream buns of the Greyfriars tuck shop, however, or the luridly iced confections of my rose-tinted childhood memories. Being Scandinavian, the cinnamon bun is ice cool - though, truth be told, they're actually pretty similar to our own chelsea variety. Described as a Scandinavian obsession, the cinnamon bun is made slightly differently throughout the Nordic region - but what all the recipes have in common is a fluffy richness and a generous helping of sweet spice. (The American cinnamon roll, as far as I can tell, is similar, but generally iced and studded with fruit or nuts.) Sweet buns are best eaten warm from the oven, which means that, unless you're lucky enough to live near a Nordic bakery, they're definitely worth a go at home.
The flourPlain flour is used in most Scandinavian recipes to give the buns a softer crumb, though Dan Lepard and Rose Prince, in her Pocket Bakery, both go for strong bread flour instead. This does make the buns lighter, but also slightly chewier, so I'm going to stick with the plain stuff. Half-Norwegian and all-round Scandinavian food expert Signe Johansen uses spelt flour in the recipe in her Scandilicious Baking book, explaining elsewhere that she finds this ancient grain "more digestible" than wheat. Using half plain spelt and half wholemeal spelt gives her buns a lovely nutty flavour, but my testers find them "much too heavy". If fluffiness is what we're after, plain white flour seems to have the edge.The Gail's Artisan Bakery Cookbook uses croissant dough, an innovation they credit to the great state of California: "and it's no exaggeration to say that our lives haven't been the same since". For me, croissants fall into the same category as wine or chocolate - delicious things best left to the experts. However, I bite the bullet and get on with it (a process which takes most of the morning, and involves rolling out some recalcitrantly springy dough until it's a metre long, doing some fancy folding, pressing an enormous slab of butter into it, then repeating several times until my arms ache with the effort). But, by God, the results are pretty stunning - crisp on top, indecently buttery within (more butter is added at the filling stage), they're almost impossible to keep away from. But they are not the cinnamon buns I'm after, to my relief, which means no more rolling.
FatMilk, butter and egg are used to make the enriched dough for the rolls. Lepard uses a lot more liquid than the others for a very soft dough - his rolls are wonderfully fluffy and handsomely risen, but too light inside, despite the chewy crust; they almost melt in my mouth. They could be more to the American taste, however: my New York-raised tester favoured "the white fluffier ones that seemed to be baked all together in a really luscious, buttery, cinnamon swirl". (She may be angling for my job.) Lepard also infuses his milk with spice, rather than adding them to the dry ingredients. As the milk should be scalded before use, not just to activate the yeast but to give, as Johansen explains, a softer result, this seems a wise move to give greater depth of flavour.

Spices

The bun itself, surprisingly, does not contain cinnamon (that is found in the filling). Instead, it is flavoured with cardamom. Only Prince and Lepard add anything else - vanilla and lemon zest respectively - but I don't want anything to distract from that gorgeous aromatic flavour. Lepard uses the cardamom seeds whole, rather than ground. Ground cardamom is far less widely available here than in Scandinavia, but it's easy to do yourself, and I think gives a more mellow flavour.
The fillingThis is where the recipes really diverge. The classics, such as Johansen and Danish chef Trina Hahneman, author of The Scandinavian Cookbook, use a mixture of butter, sugar and cinnamon, as does Gail's Bakery. Gail's choose light muscovado sugar and Lepard dark, both of which give a richer flavour than the standard caster. Sprinkling it on top of the butter, as Lepard and Gail's suggest, rather than mixing it all together, means that the filling seems to stay put better during baking. Prince uses a flour-thickened vanilla custard, which is decadently rich, but not traditional enough for my purpose. I am tempted by Lepard's clever Ryvita crumb mixture which, despite my scepticism, adds a lovely savoury tang to contrast with all that rich sugar. It's a bit leftfield though; Johansen's salt gives almost the same effect, though I don't think you need the vanilla-infused stuff she uses.
The shaping and finishYou can use an apricot jam glaze for a super-shiny finish, as Prince suggests, but I think the standard egg and sugar glaze is sufficient. Johansen and Lepard both make bun cakes, rather than individual buns, which not only saves space in the oven but looks pleasingly impressive. They're easy to pull apart too, although if you find it difficult, you could always just eat the whole thing yourself.
The perfect cinnamon buns(Makes 7)
300ml whole milk
1 tsp ground cardamom seeds (about 25 pods)
50g butter
425g plain flour
7g fast action yeast
60g caster sugar
¼ tsp fine salt
1 egg, beaten lightly
Oil, to greaseFor the filling
75g butter, softened
50g dark brown sugar
2tsp cinnamon
½ tsp saltTo finish
1 egg, beaten lightly
Demerara sugar, to sprinklePut the milk in a small pan, add the cardamom seeds and bring to just below the boil. Take off the heat, stir in the butter and leave to infuse until it is just warm.Mix together all the dry ingredients in a large bowl. When the milk is warm rather than hot, make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and add the egg. Stir in, then strain in the milk and stir together to make a soft dough which comes away from the edge of the bowl.Tip on to a lightly oiled work surface (you don't want to add more flour to the mixture) and knead for five minutes - it will be very soft at first, but persevere. A dough scraper is useful here. Wipe out the bowl, oil it lightly, then return the dough to the bowl. Cover and leave somewhere draught-free and not too cold for 30 minutes. (A cold oven, with a bowl of hot water on the base, is a good place.)Meanwhile, make the filling by beating together all the ingredients until soft and easily spreadable. Grease a tall, 23cm cake tin.Roll the dough out on the lightly floured surface to a rectangle roughly 35 x 25cm. Smear the filling out across the dough (it's easiest to use your hands for this), then, starting from one of the long edges, roll the dough up tightly like a swiss roll. Position it on its seam, and cut into seven slices.Arrange these in the tin, evenly spaced out, with the smallest in the middle, cover, and leave to prove for about 30 minutes, until the dough springs back when prodded gently.Meanwhile, heat the oven to 200C/400F/gas mark six. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown.Cinnamon buns: have you fallen in love with this Scandi classic or do your loyalties lie with the chelsea, or indeed the Sally Lunn? And which other Nordic favourites would you recommend?
Photographs: Perfect cinnamon buns by Felicity Cloake for the Guardian