Well, hello there. 

It’s February, a single-digit number away from Valentine’s Day, as I am publishing this. 

This could be a Valentine’s post; it kind of is. I am sharing a recipe with you. It’s pink, it’s delicious. It’s Valentine’s all in all. 

However, it’s a gift of a recipe that honestly deserves to be made not just one time in February, just like love for oneself and one another shouldn’t be only celebrated one day in February, but every day. 

All that said, and because if you are anything like me, you aren’t here to read some anecdote or hear of great adventure. You are here because you got the itch to bake something. 

So let’s make a sheet of raspberry sweet buns topped with raspberry icing.

The recipe is a fusion of a recipe I came across at King Arthur’s and my favorite basic sweet bun recipe by Magnus Nilsson from his cookbook The Nordic Cookbook

Raspberry buns

Ingredients: Tangzhong starter: 43g water, 43g cold milk/nut milk, 15g freeze-dried and crushed raspberries, 15g unbleached flour

Sweet wheat bun: 320 ml milk/nut milk, 125 g sugar, 150 g butter, 1 Tbsp dry yeast, 800 g flour, 1 egg, 1 tsp vanilla extract, zest of a small lemon

Filling: about 100g raspberry jam, 1 Tbsp flour 

Cream topping: 90g cream cheese room temperature, 30g butter room temperature, 100g powdered sugar, 5g freeze-dried raspberries, 1/4 tsp vanilla extract, extra freeze-dried raspberries (optional for decor), 1 Tbsp white chocolate chips (optional for decor) 

Method:

To start, we are making the Tangzhong. For that, crush and grind freeze-dried raspberries in a mortar and pestle or kitchen mixer. Add crushed raspberries, flour, cold water, and cold milk into a small saucepan and heat over low heat. Whisk constantly until the mixture starts to thicken as it gets hot. The mixture should be thick and paste-like. Remove from heat. 

Add 320 ml milk to the Tangzhong, 125 g sugar. Mix well. 

Add 150 g butter to it and mix until the butter is melted and the whole mixture is cooled to lukewarm.

Once lukewarm, add 1 Tbsp of yeast and stir once just to get all the yeast to mix in. Let it rest in the pot until the yeast has foamed up; it takes about 5-10 minutes.

In a bowl of a stand mixer, measure out 800 g of flour and add fresh lemon zest. 

Once yeast has foamed up in the tangzhong milk mixture, add all of it to the flour in the mixing bowl. Add a dough hook to your machine, lock the bowl in, and start the kneading process on the lowest speed. Add one egg to the bowl while kneading and 1 tsp vanilla extract. Knead dough until all is well combined, soft, and smooth.

Turn the machine off and remove the hook. You can remove the dough from the bowl and put it into another bowl (slightly greased) for rising. But just covering the bowl you used for kneading with a towel works perfectly. No need to dirty another bowl. 

Let dough rise for an hour to two, until about double in size.

Meanwhile, mix the raspberry jam with a spoon of flour in a small bowl. If you don’t have raspberry jam, raspberry jam is easy and quickly made with frozen raspberries, sugar, a bit of vanilla, and lemon juice. 

Once the dough has risen, tip the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and knead briefly. Roll into a rectangle of about 60 cm by 40 cm.

Add the jam to the dough rectangle and spread it evenly over the entire dough sheet. Roll the dough along the longer end up into a tight log.

With a pastry cutter, knife, or string, cut the log into slices about 2 cm thick for each slice, or as you prefer. Add each slice to your buttered baking pan, but not too close together so they have room to rise. 

Once your baking dish is full with dough buns, cover it with a towel and let them rise about 20-30 min. They will about double in size again.

Preheat the oven and clean up while the dough is rising.  Bake at 180°C for about 18-20 minutes on the middle rack of the oven.

While baking, make the icing by mixing cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar, and 5 g of freeze-dried, crushed, and sifted raspberries together.

Once the buns are done baking, take them out of the oven and let them cool down. After they have cooled down, spread icing over the buns. 

They are ready to be served. If you do feel fancy, crush a couple more raspberries and sprinkle them over the buns. Chop some white chocolate and also sprinkle it over the buns. I used white chocolate chips since that seems to be the only type of white chocolate I ever have in my kitchen. 

Fix yourself a coffee or tea and enjoy.

Bonus input. If you aren’t having anyone over or feel like eating a whole tray of sweet buns, don’t spread all the icing on all of them just yet. 

The buns keep fine a couple of days in an airtight container or a bag. Heat them up and spread fresh icing on them for a treat a day later.

You can also only bake about half of them and freeze the other half of the rolled buns, not risen, just rolled, to use later on. Freeze them in an airtight container or Ziploc bags.

Not tired of baking yet, perhaps you wanna give this recipe of mine a try.

Happy baking.