Kanelbullar Recipe – Swedish Cinnamon Buns (2024)

Classic Swedish cinnamon buns or Ikea cinnamon roll recipe. An easy-to-make kanelbullar recipe resulting in soft, aromatic cardamom and cinnamon buns, perfect to have with coffee.

What are kanelbullar?

A Swedish cinnamon bun or cinnamon roll or kanelbullar are rolled pieces of yeast-leavened dough, coated with butter and sprinkled with a generous amount of sugar and cinnamon. The rolls get cut into smaller pieces, which resemble snails.

They were made famous all over the world by Ikea.

What sets the Ikea cinnamon roll recipe apart from other cinnamon buns is the use of cardamom, which imparts the kanelbullar their distinctive taste.

Try more traditional European bakes: Serbian Gibanica – Cheese Pie, Romanian Mucenici, or Swiss Cherry Pie.

How to make Ikea cinnamon rolls?

Well, it is all about the yeast-leavened dough and the rolling. But that's easy stuff, don't worry about it.

Fresh or active dry yeast

• I have made the kanelbullar and other similar rolls or buns many times. Really, lots of times! I have made the rolls either using fresh yeast or active dry yeast, and although both are good, I prefer working with fresh yeast.
• However, I remember from the time we used to live in London that fresh yeast was not available everywhere. I have no idea why; it is such a cheap product (one cube costs 9 cents here). So, if fresh yeast is not available, you can use active dry yeast instead.
• It is the kind of yeast I used to make the Swedish cinnamon buns I photographed, and you can see in the pictures that they are nice and fluffy as well. And totally delicious!
• When using fresh yeast, I would normally use a whole cube to make this kanelbullar recipe, which weighs 42 g/ 1.5 oz. If I replace that with active dry yeast, I use two sachets of it, each weighing 7 g/ 0.25 oz.
• Dough made with fresh yeast will need less time to rise, about 30-40 minutes, depending on the temperature in your kitchen. The dough for these particular cinnamon rolls made with active dry yeast needed about one hour until the ball of dough had doubled in size.
• Either way, keep an eye on the dough and continue with the recipe as soon as the dough has doubled in size. If you leave the dough for too little time and it doesn't have enough time to rise, the end product will be rather flat and not fluffy. But if you leave the dough to rise too much is not good either, the dough will lose its power and sink during the baking process. So, leave it until about doubled in size.

Knead the yeast dough

You can mix and start kneading the ingredients in the stand mixer fitted with a dough hook. I do that with my Thermomix, but any good stand mixer will do.

• I let the machine do most of the kneading, then I turn the dough onto the floured working surface and only knead in as much flour as the dough can take. In the case of this kanelbullar recipe, I measured 1 kg/ 2.2 lbs/ 8 ⅓ cups all-purpose flour at the beginning but ended up using about 930 g/ 2 lbs of it; the dough was then perfect; it was elastic and would not stick to the hands anymore.
• Use a little more flour if the dough keeps sticking to your hands, but just little by little, to make sure that you don't add too much.

Let the dough rise

• After kneading the dough, place it into a large bowl and let it rise in a warm place until doubled in size. As mentioned above, dough made with fresh yeast will probably need between 30 and 40 minutes, while dough made with active dry yeast will need about one hour. Keep checking.

Shape the kanelbullar

• When the dough has risen, punch it down, knead it very shortly again, and divide it into three equal parts.
• Lightly flour the working surface and roll one dough ball into a large rectangle, about 35x45 cm/ 14x17 inches.
• Divide the soft butter into three parts as well and smear the rolled rectangle with ⅓ of the butter.
• Sprinkle it generously with ⅓ of the cinnamon-sugar mixture.

• Roll the dough starting at the smaller end and cut it into 3-4 cm/1.2-1.6 inches thick pieces. Place the Swedish cinnamon buns onto a baking tray lined with baking paper.
• Repeat with the remaining pieces of dough. You will need two baking trays for this amount of cinnamon buns.
• Cover the trays with clean kitchen towels and let the buns rise in a warm place for about 30 minutes (probably a bit longer when using active dry yeast) or until doubled in size.
• Beat the egg and the milk in a small bowl. Brush the cinnamon buns with the mixture and sprinkle them with some pearl/nib sugar.

Bake

• In the meantime, preheat the oven and bake the cinnamon buns, one tray after another, for about 8-10 minutes or until golden brown and cooked through.
• To make sure that the cinnamon buns are cooked through, I always take one and break it in the middle to see how it looks on the inside.
• Let the kanelbullar cool slightly on a wire rack and serve warm or cold.

Can you freeze and reheat them?

• If you have too many Ikea cinnamon rolls, when cold, cover them well and place them in the fridge.
• To serve them the next day, you can reheat them in the oven; they will be just as soft and lovely as the day before.
• The cold cinnamon buns or kanelbullar can be frozen as well, slightly defrosted, and reheated in the oven, as mentioned above.

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