A recipe for Finnish custard buns

AKA possibly the best pasty ever created

Dallaspulla

The final thing I ever cooked for staff food as a restaurant cook was a Finnish sweet bun called Dallaspulla.

The practice at the last restaurant I cooked at was always to make something special yourself if it was your birthday, for example, or, as in this case, your last day working there.

And on that final day, what I wanted to make was a sweet Finnish bun my Finnish wife had introduced me to years before when we were yet girlfriend and boyfriend visiting each other on different sides of Europe while negotiating a long distance relationship.

This bun is a creamy, vanilla-filled thing of beauty.

It is like a less delicate, ballsier, (very) distant cousin of the French pain au raisin. A cousin who, having moved to colder climes up north, has long-since upgraded his flaky pastry for hearty bread dough, and decided raisins were no longer worth the bother.

The subtle custardiness of the pain au raisin is dialled up immeasurably in the Dallaspulla through the use of what in Finnish is called rahkaa, a fresh cheese not dissimilar to fromage frais/blanc (outside Finland you might find rahkaa called quark in shops). This is sweetened with both sugar and custard powder to create a rich yet balanced vanilla filling, almost like cheesecake, that runs through the entire bun.

There are other custard buns in the world.

But there is only one Dallaspulla.

Here is how I make it:

Enough for 10 Dallaspulla

For the bun dough:

250ml milk
20g fresh yeast
100g caster sugar
500g flour
75g butter
1 egg

For the filling:

125g room temp butter
45g corn or potato starch
45g sugar
200g rahkaa/quark
3 tsp vanilla extract
(cream)

First, we start with the dough, and I’m happy to say there are no surprises here.

Heat the milk to just below boiling then add the butter and let it come down again to warm body temp. I don’t really know why this heating and cooling step exists but it’s what I was taught at culinary school and I’m far too stubborn to ignore what I was taught during what remains the most expensive experience I’ve ever paid for.

Anyway, once the milk’s cooled make a paste of the yeast with a splash of it. Mix the sugar with the milk to dissolve and then add these wet dough ingredients to the dry. Kneed into a nice smooth ball and set aside to double in size.

While the dough is rising we can make the filling. Whisk the butter until it’s pale and light. Then mix it with the corn flour, rahkaa/quark and vanilla. Then set aside about a quarter of the filling to top the buns later and mix enough cream into the rest so it can be easily spread.

Once the dough is risen, roll it out so it’s about 1 cm thick and spread out the cream-softened filling. Roll it up tightly and cut into 8-10 slices and lay them spiral side up. Cover these with cling film and let rise again for 30 mins. At which point you can warm your oven to 200 degrees.

When they are risen again, press a divot into the centre and fill this with the remainder of the filling (the part you didn’t add cream to).

Brush the edges with the egg and bake for 15-20 mins until gold and the smell of all your dreams coming true fills your kitchen!