Swedish Bread and Butter Kanelbulle Pudding with Bourbon and Bananas

Gothenburgers are known as the jokers in straight laced Sweden. Whenever a cartoon character or film role requires an amusing protagonist, they always cast someone from Gothenburg. It bubbles up a lot at work with very few days passing without an email chain awash with Swedish puns that are so obvious that even I can spot them.

As a sign that I’ve gone slightly native, I’ve found myself creating recipes based on how good the pun would sound, rather than what the end result would taste like: truly a recipe for disaster. Whilst this might create entertaining fodder for a blog post, it doesn’t necessarily translate to deliciousness. I found myself creating a dinner party menu full of ideas that sounded funny but were duty bound to taste awful. Having got a laugh at the idea of Stromanoff (herring stroganoff) I changed tack and used salmon far more successfully instead. And even then I tried to ruin it by calling it “laxanoff”.

Whilst the punning is fun and dangerous, I’ve found it very liberating as it lets you combine ideas and flavours with more energy, such as inventing a Swaesar Salad. Which leads me to one cultural mash up that worked brilliantly. I was fumbling around the supermarket trying to rustle up a fun dessert that married British and Swedish cultures, when I stumbled across the idea of creating a Scandi version of bread and butter pudding. Given that the Swedes have a pudding and baking culture that would make Greg Wallace walk around with a permanent boner, it felt like it could really work.

One of Sweden’s most iconic culinary emblems is the kanelbulle – which is a swirled a cinnamon bun, sprinkled with crystalised sugar that is as prevalent over here as a doughnut would be in the USA. They are part and parcel of any casual “fika” which sees Swedes devour a cheeky little cake with a friend and a coffee. But fika isn’t just coffee and a cake – it’s a cultural institution that Henry James could have waffled on about as a follow up to A Portrait of a Lady.

So with the unlikely pair of Greg Wallace and Henry James in mind I dreamt up the idea of creating a kanelbulle-bread and butter pudding. It works with croissants and marmalade, so why not cinnamon buns?

To make it a bit more grown up and to add offer up another flavour to enhance the cinnamon I decided to supplement it with bourbon, bananas and sultanas. And with this thought process, the world’s first kanelbulle bread and butter pudding was born. Here’s how to make it.

Ingredients

1 large family sized kanelbulle, 5 normal kanelbulle or a bag of mini kanelbulle
2 bananas sliced
100g of sultanas
500ml of custard
50ml of bourbon
100ml of cream
50g of brown sugar

Method

If you’re lucky enough to have a large kanelbulle, cut it into a series of 1 cm thick slices. Otherwise just slice the smaller ones and make do. Layer the slices with the bananas and then sprinkle with sultanas in a baking dish. Douse with bourbon. Add another layer just like the first and arrange the slices so they make a nice pattern. Then unleash the custard and cream. Let the custard and cream seep in and then sprinkle some brown sugar on top.



Bake in a medium oven for 30-40 minutes and serve with ice cream.





It far exceeded my expectations and I am now looking forward to cooking it again on October 4th - which is National Kanelbulle Day in Sweden.

Thank you Christian for the photographs. And to Bengt Olof Åradsson / Wikipedia for the image at the top.

Baked Plums

"Baked plums" I hear you sigh, "how boring". But not when they are steeped in rum, marinated in cardamon and ginger, sprinkled with sugar, dotted with butter and then lovingly baked. Before being served with yoghurt that has been blessed with pistachios.

Enjoy the ride.



Halve the plums and marinate in a good slug of Cruzan golden rum, a squeeze of lime, a finger of grated ginger, and crucially some cardamon. I cracked the pods in two and was transported straight back to the market in Munnar where we bought our collection of spices.



Line a baking dish with foil and place the halved plums flesh side up before sprinkling with sugar and anointing with unsalted butter. Adjust the amount of sugar you use to how sour you imagine the plums are. If in doubt add more. And preferably use brown sugar rather than the white stuff I used. Pour the excess marinate around the plums.



Bake for half an hour or so until the flesh has turned an Oscar golden hue. Spoon the now crimson juice back over the plums to ensure you don't miss out on any of the juicy flavours.



Given that this was a pretty random composition, inspired by nothing more than a cheap bag of plums and a vague recollection of how Cowie's Mum poaches her pears, it came out brilliantly. We loved the unique flavour that cardamon brings to the party coupled with the sweet boozy taste of rum. The yoghurt balanced the fruitiness without resorting to weighing it down with cream whilst the pistachios added some much needed texture.

I'm definitely cooking this again. I've got a funny feeling this might become one of Cowie's favourites! She'll be very upset she missed out on its debut outing. This would make a great base to a crumble or cobbler. I'm even toying with the idea of plum and cardamon jam! Roll on the Autumn!

Sauza Agave Recipe Challenge: Blueberry Pie

We found an awesome book about cooking with agave nectar at work on Slashfood and have decided that a different member of our team will cook a different recipe each month from it.

The book is called Baking with Agave Nectar and can be bought from Amazon.



Jenny bought the book so had the honour of cooking the first dish from the, now cherished, agave cooking book.

Rather than waffling on, I am just going to let the pictures do the talking...

















If the pictures above tell you nothing else, it's that Ed likes cream on his pie!

Jenny's blueberry pie made with agave nectar was stunningly good. The rest of us have got our work cut out to top Jenny's opening gambit. Another fresh and unexpected use of agave from the Beam team.