Mandelboller (Norwegian Almond Buns)

For the past 10 days I’ve been staying at an Airbnb outside of Sandnessjøen on the Helgeland coast in Northern Norway. When I arrived here my car struggled up the driveway that was covered in thick snow and ice, but now all of the snow has melted and I just spotted a few flowers! I guess spring is on its way.

So I decided to bake some spring colored buns, and I thought these Norwegian mandelboller, or almond buns, topped with yellow vanilla custard would be such a pretty and tasty spring treat! These would also be lovely to make around Easter.

Tips

One of the key ingredients in most Norwegian sweet buns is cardamom. And well, if you’ve seen my other Scandinavian recipes you probably already know what I’m going to say about the cardamom here.

You can use ground cardamom for this recipe, but if you have a mortar and pestal I highly recommend grinding cardamom seeds instead, as freshly ground seeds are much more flavorful. I wouldn’t bother unless it really made a difference, but it really does.

Pre ground cardamom doesn’t have much flavor, so if you do use it, I would probably double the amount of cardamom.

Add the cardamom, yeast, and sugar to lukewarm milk in a large mixing bowl. Then you’ll add about 2/3 of the flour and mix the dough together either by hand or in a mixer with a dough hook and then add in the softened butter. Slowly add the rest of the flour. You might need a bit more or less flour to form dough that isn’t too sticky to knead.

When the dough forms a nice ball, continue to knead the dough for about ten minutes. I always do this by hand, so don’t worry if you don’t have a mixer to knead the dough. Put on some music and enjoy kneading!

Let the dough rise, and in the meantime you can make the vanila custard for the top of the mandelboller, as this will need time to cool before adding it to the buns. Alternatively you can use pre-made vanilla pudding.

Making the vanilla custard from scratch might seem intimidating, but it’s actually pretty easy. Just make sure that you keep whisking the custard the entire time you’re heating it so there aren’t any lumps.

Heat the milk and half of the sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. Split open the vanilla pod with a knife and carefully scrape out the seeds, adding them to the saucepan. If you don’t have a vanilla pod you can add a teaspoon of vanilla extract instead.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks together with the rest of the sugar and the corn starch. Set aside the egg whites – you can use them in the almond filling and icing sugar topping, if you like.

Once the milk starts to bubble in the saucepan, pour about half of it into the bowl with the egg mixture, whisking the entire time. Then return the saucepan to the heat and pour the egg and milk mixture from the bowl back into the saucepan, whisking the whole time.

Let the custard cook for 2 minutes, whisking the entire time. By the end it should be quite thick and harder to whisk.

Once the 2 minutes are up, remove the custard from the heat and pour it into a clean bowl. Cover with plastic wrap, placing it directly touching the top of the custard. Let the custard cool while the mandelboller dough finishes rising.

Next you’ll make the almond filling! If you don’t want to make this from scratch, you can use almond paste instead. You can order almond paste online here.

Add the almonds and sugar to a food processor and pulse until getting the consistency of soft marzipan. It should hold shape when you press it together. Add the milk (or egg whites) and pulse a few more times until incorporated.

Once the dough has doubled in size, divide it into 12 equal parts and roll them into balls. Then use a rolling pin to roll out each bun into a circle about 7 inches (18 cm) in diameter). Add about a tablespoon of the almond filling to the center of the dough circle and fold the top top and bottom edges together and then the left and right edges, to make a square.

Arrange the buns on a baking pan lined with baking paper. They will puff out a bit in the oven, but you can set them fairly close together on the pan. Cover the buns and let them rise again for about 20 – 30 minutes.

Once the buns have had their second rise, preheat the oven, and then use a spoon or piping bag to add a generous portion of vanilla custard to the center of each bun. You can press down the center a bit to make more space for the custard – I try to fit as much as possible on each bun.

Then brush the buns with egg wash and sprinkle with sliced almonds. Bake the buns for about 15 – 20 minutes (depending on your oven) until the tops and bottoms of the buns have turned golden. Be careful not to over bake the buns.

Let the buns cool and then drizzle with icing. You can also freeze them before adding the icing.

You can switch the recipe from US measurements to metric by clicking from “US Customary” to “Metric” under Ingredients.