The first batch of the classic Swedish saffron buns (lussebullar or lussekatter) I usually bake for Lucia on December 13. But I decided to be a bit early this year. And tried out a new recipe which claimed to be "the best lussekatter ever".
It was not.
The buns turned out rather dry. And very tasteless. The latter could be due to that the saffron was crap, but that has never happened to me before, so who knows.
The recipe was vegan, but since it's impossible to find dairy-free butter in Sweden without palmoil I can unfortunately never go fully vegan when I bake recipes that calls for butter, so I used my usual liquid blend of butter/oil. And that can certainly not have been the reason for the buns turning out so dry. Most Lucia bun-recipes are pretty much alike, with only small variations.
As I shy away from dairy products as much as possible nowadays I don't use quark in the buns anymore - this is the old trustworthy recipe for lussekatter with quark, if you want to try it out - but that wasn't an issue last year, when I omitted that and used oat milk. The buns were flavourful and moist anyway. I don't think there's a vegan substitute for quark and oat milk usually makes bread extra moist.
I will bake a second batch next week and fingers crossed they'll turn out much better than this first one. Pretty ain't everything, but flavour and consistency is.
Read all about it:
Previous years lussebulle-baking posts
Did you try to substitute butter with sunflower oil?
ReplyDeleteI've found that making buns with oil instead of butter makes for a weird concistency. But I'm definitely up for trying it with other recipes. And it can work well with cakes at least:) .
DeleteLooks wonderful!!
ReplyDelete