Swedish rhubarb cake

The other day I found a Scandinavian cookery book in a local charity shop, and this recipe was in it.
We have one lone rhubarb plant in the garden, and there was just enough ready to pick to use in this cake.
I've adapted the recipe to the kind of cake I wanted, so I'm claiming it as mine now! It makes a small amount of rhubarb into a delicious dessert, tho' it's not a big cake if you have a family to feed.

2eggs
150g caster sugar
90g plain flour
1/2 tspn baking powder
about 250g rhubarb
50g cold butter
1 tspn cinnamon
2 tbspn pearl sugar

Preheat oven 175C/gas 3/4
Grease and line a 20cm springform tin [make sure you grease the tin well or the cake will stick like glue!]

Cut the rhubarb into about 1cm pieces.
Beat the eggs and sugar with a mixer till it's pale and nice and fluffy. Then fold in the flour and baking powder.
Pour this batter into the tin and put the rhubarb on top, pushing it into the batter.
Then cut the butter into thin slices - it needs to be very cold [straight from the freezer cold as suggested by Phil] and very quickly becomes difficult to slice. I used a potato peeler then changed to a small sharp knife. Put the butter on top of the batter and sprinkle the pearl sugar over.

Bake for about 40 mins till golden - the original recipe says 25mins, but my cake wasn't anywhere near cooked, so gave it another 15 mins. Leave in the tin to cool and then turn onto a wire rack.

The pearl sugar disappeared with the butter, and gives a lovely crunchy layer on top of the cake, and the rhubarb was moist underneath. I sprinkled a bit of icing sugar on top.

Cinnamon buns

My friend and her family went to Norway on holiday recently, and she sent me a postcard, in English, with the recipe for cinnamon buns [kannelbullar]. Presume kannel means cinnamon like cannelle in French. I just had to try some.
I decided to use my bread maker to make the dough, and then just had to roll it out, fill, roll it up, cut and give it a second rise. It worked out really well, and I'm very happy with the result.
You can, of course, make the dough by hand.

The recipe said it made 12, but I made one too big so only got 11!

Dough:

2 tspns instant yeast [I used 1 sachet and it worked fine]
60g butter
50g sugar
150ml milk which has been scalded and cooled
1 egg
1/2 tspn salt
1 heaped tspn freshly ground cardamom
325g strong white flour

Filling:

60g soft butter
60g caster sugar
3 tspns ground cinnamon
pearl sugar

Beat the egg and divide in half - half for dough and half to glaze buns.

Bread machine - put all the ingredients into the bucket and run on dough cycle.

By Hand - put flour and butter in a bowl and rub in; fold in the salt, sugar, cardamom and yeast. In another bowl pour in the milk and add half the egg and mix together. Add to the dry ingredients. Mix with your hand till you get a smooth, stretchy  dough [takes about 5 mins]. Leave the dough in a warm place till doubled in size. Knock back and knead again for 2-3 mins.

For both methods:

Once the dough is ready, turn onto a floured surface and roll into a large rectangle about 1/2 cm thick.
Make the filling - beat the butter, sugar and cinnamon together till smooth.
Spread the filling over the dough and roll up like a swiss roll. Cut into 12 slices.
Put each slice, cut side up, in a muffin case on a baking sheet. Cover with a damp teatowel or clingfilm and leave for about an hour to double in size.

Heat oven to 210C/gas 6-7 . I used gas 7 and a few buns were overcooked.

Egg wash the buns with the other half of the egg, and sprinkle with pearl sugar.
Bake buns for about 6 mins till golden.

Here's my buns before the second rise.

                                                           And here's a ready-to-eat bun.

They are delicious, and would be lovely warm for breakfast. For my own tastes, as a cinnamon fanatic, I'd like a bit more filling, otherwise I wouldn't change anything. I thought it would be a really complicated recipe to make, but it's easy, tho' a bit time consuming if you're making your own dough. I brought some pearl sugar back from France, but I'm sure one of the supermarkets would have some. The cardamom just gives a hint of another flavour in the background. I'll certainly make these again.