A super easy fruity variant on the Swedish coffee rolls that my mother used to make.

With the parents coming over, and a lot of redcurrants in the freezer, I decided to make these rolls from a recipe in a recent Foodies magazine. It’s an easy recipe and I think it’s open to lots of variations, so I’ll definitely be experimenting with it some more.

Prepare the dough

Melt the butter in the milk and leave to cool off to luke-warm. Combine flour, sugar, salt, cardamom and cinnamon in a bowl. Mix the luke-warm milk into the flour. Whisk the egg with a fork to mix egg yolk and white. Pour about a third of this onto the dough, and knead this well for about 5 minutes. When the egg makes the dough too moist, add a little bit of flour. It should be soft and light but not stick to your hands. Shape into a ball and leave to rise in a warm place, to double in volume (about 1,5 hour).

Form the rolls

When the yeast has done its work, shape the dough into a longish flat rectangle of about 14 cm x 35 to 40 cm and 1 cm thickness. Moisten the almond paste with another third of the egg to make it soft, and spread it over the dough – leave clear some 3 cm off the top edge. Scatter the redcurrants over this layer and press lightly to secure them.
I used frozen redcurrants, which I defrosted when I made an earlier batch. That made the rolls very wet, but they did turn out fine nonetheless. The frozen ones made the rolls very easy to cut though, so that would seem a better method. Of course you could use fresh berries as well; that would be just as easy.

Roll up the dough starting from the short side. Move the roll to a cutting board, and using a serrated knife, first cut the roll in half, then each piece in three. Place the rolls on a baking sheet lined with baking parchment, keeping them 2 or 3 cm apart. No need to let them rise again. Mix the remaining third of egg with a bit of water and brush this over the tops and sides.

Baking

Bake the rolls in a pre-heated oven of 200°C for about 16 minutes – or just a minute shorter if you’re not using frozen berries. When done, get them out and place them on a cooling rack. Mix up the glaze to a syruppy paste that will drip off a spoon, and drizzle it over the hot rolls. Leave to dry and cool.
I used some left-over ready-made lemon-flavoured cake glaze mixed with melted white chocolate, but I think the trad simple sugar glaze fits these better in the way of looks. The lemon chocolate glaze tasted great though. These rolls were a great success!