Solskinnsboller – Norwegian Sun Buns (Solboller)

If you’ve been to a Norwegian bakery you’ve probably been overwhelmed by all the delicious cardamom and cinnamon buns on offer. There are traditional kanelboller, cardamom rolls, twisted kanelsnurrer, and of course the classic skolebrød. How are you to choose just one?

Lately I’ve found myself most often reaching for solskinnsboller, or “sunshine buns” in English, also called solboller, or “sun buns.”

Solskinnsboller are made with a sweet cardamom dough, rolled with cinnamon and sugar, filled in the center with vanilla custard, and drizzled with icing on top. Norwegians make many different kinds of custard buns, but solskinnsboller are some of the most popular Norwegian custard buns.

A solskinnsbolle is essentially a hybrid of a kanelbolle and skolebrød, without the coconut. In fact to make these, I used my kanelboller recipe and then added the vanilla custard and icing glaze from my skolebrød recipe.

Solskinnsboller might look intimidating to make because there are a lot of steps, but actually I think these are some of the easier Norwegian buns to make, because they’re pretty hard to mess up.

This is also why I like ordering them at bakeries. Kanelboller are more hit or miss, as sometimes they can be a bit dry if baked for too long, while skolebrød sometimes doesn’t have enough cardamom flavor in the dough.

But the vanilla custard in solskinnsboller keeps them from tasting too dry, and the cinnamon sugar swirl packs a lot of flavor into the dough. Win win!

Some Norwegians also call these buns solboller, but you don’t want to confuse them with the solboller Northern Norwegians eat when the sun returns after the polar night. Those solboller are more like doughnuts than buns. You can find my Northern Norwegian solboller recipe here.

Tips

Solskinnsboller dough has a lot of butter in it. And while usually it’s best to add butter to dough towards the end of kneading, in this case you should add in the melted (and cooled to room temperature) butter at the beginning.

Melt the butter into the milk in a saucepan and then remove it from the heat and pour the mixture into a large mixing bowl. Let it cool to lukewarm before adding the cardamom and yeast.

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. If you only have ground cardamom, I would double the amount in the recipe.

You can knead the dough by hand or in a mixer with a dough hook. I knead it by hand for about ten minutes. The dough is quite easy to knead, so I really don’t think a mixer is necessary here, unless you have one you want to use. I usually just put on some music and enjoy the kneading!

While the dough is rising you can make the vanilla custard for the center of the buns.

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. But if you don’t want to make it from scratch, you could simply use vanilla pudding instead.

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.

And in a separate bowl, mix together the rest of the sugar and the flour and corn starch. Add the egg yolks and whole egg and whisk it all together until it’s nice and smooth.

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 solskinnsboller dough finishes rising.

Make sure you put the plastic wrap directly onto the vanilla custard while it cools so that you don’t get a hard shell on top.

I like to roll the dough into a square, or even a tall rectangle, so that I can roll the dough many times, giving the kanelboller many spirals.

Make sure the butter is nice and soft when mixing it with the cinnamon and sugar, otherwise it will be hard to spread. If it isn’t soft you can pop it in the microwave for a few seconds.

If you like a very sweet cinnamon roll, you can add more sugar to the butter. You can also use brown sugar instead of white sugar, if you prefer.

When you spread the cinnamon sugar filling on the dough, make sure to keep a couple inches free on both the top and the bottom. This will make it easier to make a well in the middle of the bun for the vanilla custard, as the dough in the center of the roll won’t be full of butter and sugar.

I like to slice the buns quite thin, which gives a bit of a crispier solbolle.

When making the wells in the center of the rolls for the vanilla custard, make sure to press the dough down firmly, as the dough will puff up a bit again on the second rise. Also be sure the the bottom is in fact covered in dough – you don’t want to just make a hole through the whole roll, as then the custard will fall through.

Like skolebrød, I used to make solskinnsboller when I worked in the bakery section of a supermarket during my first year in Norway, and sometimes I would intentionally mess one up so that I could eat it. They’re just so irresistible! My kitchen still smells heavenly after baking these this morning. In fact it might be time for another one of these little sunshine cream buns…

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