Kanelsnegle

I was looking for a recipe for a cinnamon pastry that was smaller, cuter, and a little lighter than your run-of-the-mill cinnamon buns. After finding nothing in English, Lars saved me by mentioning a Danish pastry called kanelsnegle ("cinnamon snails" in Danish). They are perfect and cute as hell! There are a ton of recipes floating around in Danish and a surprisingly large amount in English as well (I was just using the wrong search terms, I guess). I got this recipe from Beatie's Bentos, liking it most for its simplicity.

You'll need:

• 3-4 tablespoons of melted butter (for dough), 2-3 tablespoons of soft butter (for filling)
  
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 oz. dry yeast (= 14 g = 2 sachets) (If using fresh yeast cakes, use 35 grams)
• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
  

First you start the dough. It's a little bit tricky to get the melted butter and milk to the exact right temperature for the yeast (this is tricky with doughs in general). You want it to be warm, but not too hot or cold. So I add the butter immediately after being melted to the milk, and then immediately add the yeast. Then stir. As you're stirring, start dropping the flour in bit by bit.

Once you have your dough, sprinkle flour on the (clean) countertop for rolling. Roll it into a rectangle. The recipe in the link says to make it a little less than 1/2 inch thick, but I went for thinner, which may or may not have been a mistake. You'll get a higher yield, but the pastries will also be a little crunchier.

Put together the filling by mixing cinnamon and brown sugar with the 2-3 tablespoons of soft butter. (If you roll the dough out thinly, you might wanna go with 3 tablespoons of butter since you'll have more surface area to work with.) Spread the filling around the rectangle.

Now you roll. Hand roll the dough up along the short length of the rectangle so you have a long tube of kanelsnegle dough. Cut it up into a little over 1/2 inch slices and place each cross section on a baking pan. Try to keep some space in between the snegle (snails) for when they rise. Cover them with a cloth and let them rise for 15 minutes, in the meanwhile preheating the oven to 400 degrees F. Bake for 10-15 minutes (testing if ready by tasting, of course).

This goes beautifully with coffee. Especially when the kanelsnegle are still warm.