Cinnamon Rolls (Egg-free)

Now that I'm living in Sweden I partake in 'fika' on a regular basis - to fika is to sit down with friends/colleagues/whoever and have some coffee and cake (although in my case it's tea and cake as I don't drink coffee). The majority of my fika experiences take place at work, and a substantial part of them occur at our weekly group meetings, for which we take turns at bringing bread and/or cake. It's sort of an unwritten rule that it should be home-baked, but that should be doable for someone like me.

Then my new colleagues told me about the tricky bit: our boss is allergic not only to nuts, but also to eggs. Off the top of my head I couldn't think of a single cake recipe in my repertoire that didn't include eggs - although after thinking a bit more about it I came up with one. Naturally, I felt compelled to overcome this challenge. Upon researching the subject, I found that there are in fact lots of recipes for baking without eggs on the internet. Never-the-less, I will post about here about my experiences with it.

For the first round, I chose the perhaps most quintessentially Danish/Swedish cake: the cinnamon roll. These are ubiquitous (if in somewhat different versions) in both Sweden and Denmark.


Ingredients:
dough
- 50 g (2 oz) fresh yeast
- 5 dL (2 cups) milk
- 125 g (4.4 oz) margarine
- ½ tsp salt
- 125 g (4.4 oz) sugar
- 5 tsp cardamom
- at least 900 g (2 lbs) flour
filling
- 150 g (¹/₃ lb) margarine
- 12 tbsp dark brown sugar
- 6 tbsp cinnamon

The milk and the margarine was mixed in a small pot and heated on low heat until the margarine was melted. The lukewarm mixture (let it cool for a little while if too warm) was poured over crumbled fresh yeast before adding sugar, cardamom, salt, and flour. The dough was kneaded for some minutes until smooth. The dough was covered and left to rise for a couple of hours (this was definitely plenty of time - if allowed to stand until the volume has doubled it should be sufficient).

While the dough was rising, the filling was made by mixing all the ingredients on low heat and then cooling the mixture to get a dark brown paste - if it's too runny it will cause problems later.

The risen dough was rolled out using a little little extra flour. The filling was spread evenly on the dough and then it was rolled into a log. The log was sliced and the slices were placed on a sheet of baking paper.

Tip: to prevent the rolls from uncoiling the outer end was stretched slightly and placed under the roll.

They were baked at 200 C (400 F) for 13-15 minutes.

Served warm - they can easily be frozen and re-heated in the oven. For the luxury version, they can be decorated with a frosting made from water and powdered sugar.