Dessert · Year-round

Light cinnamon rolls with quark

Cinnamon rolls that won't put you in a coma. Quark in the dough instead of a stick of butter, quark in the glaze instead of a brick of cream cheese. Still soft, still tangy, gone in two bites. Eat them warm.

I have a built-in distrust of the word 'light' stamped on anything baked. It usually means dry, sad, and apologising for existing. These are not that. The trick is quark, that thick tangy fresh curd cheese, doing the job a stick of butter usually does in the dough and the job a brick of cream cheese usually does in the glaze. It carries the moisture and the tang at a fraction of the weight, and nobody at the table is going to ask where the butter went.

The dough should be soft and a little sticky, and you have to trust that. Everyone panics at sticky dough and dumps in more flour, and what you get is a hockey puck. Don't. Knead it eight, ten minutes, let it stay tacky, let it rise until it is clearly lighter and puffier even if it does not quite double. Roll it into a rectangle, butter, cinnamon sugar, and roll it up tight from the long side. Cut it with a length of dental floss slipped under the roll and crossed over the top. It shears clean through without crushing the spiral the way a knife does.

Second rise, then into a moderate oven until the tops are gold. The glaze is just quark, a little icing sugar, vanilla, spread over them while they are still warm so it half-melts into the cracks. And here is the move that takes them from nice to memorable: half a teaspoon of cardamom and the zest of half an orange stirred into the cinnamon sugar. Suddenly they taste almost Scandinavian, like something from a bakery in Stockholm at seven in the morning. Eat them warm. They are never as good cold, and you will not have to worry about leftovers anyway.

Total time: 2 h 20 min
Serves: 12 people
Difficulty: 2 / 5
Pair with: Strong black coffee. That is the whole pairing. A cortado if you want to be Spanish about it, but the point is bitter and hot against sweet and warm.

Ingredients

Dough
- 200 gplain wheat flour
- 100 gcake/pastry flour
- 100 glow-fat quark
- 90-100 mlsemi-skimmed milk, lukewarm
- 7 gdried yeast
- 1egg
- 20 gsugar
- 5 gsalt
Filling
- 30 gsoft butter
- 40 glight brown soft sugar
- 2 tbspground cinnamon
- ½ tspground cardamom · optional
- ½orange, zested · optional
Quark glaze
- 100 glow-fat quark
- 25 gicing sugar
- ½ tspvanilla extract

Method

1
Warm the milk to about 35 °C (lukewarm) and stir in the yeast and sugar. Leave 5 minutes. Put both flours and the salt in a large bowl, add the yeast mix, the quark and the egg, and knead 8 to 10 minutes. The dough should be soft and a little sticky. Do not add extra flour straight away.
heads up A soft tacky dough bakes light. A dough you have choked with extra flour bakes dense. Resist the urge to add more, it firms up as it proves.
2
Shape the dough into a ball, put it in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a damp cloth or film, and leave to rise about 60 minutes in a warm spot. It does not need to double exactly, but should be clearly airier.
3
Flour the work surface, tip the dough out gently, dust the top lightly, and roll it into a rectangle of about 35 x 25 cm. If it still sticks a little, that is fine.
4
Spread the dough with the soft butter. Mix the sugar and cinnamon (and the cardamom and orange zest if using) and scatter it evenly over the dough.
Half a teaspoon of cardamom and the zest of half an orange through the cinnamon sugar. This is the upgrade. Almost Scandinavian, and worth the two extra minutes.
5
Roll the dough up tightly from the long side. Cut into 12 equal pieces, ideally with a length of dental floss slid under the roll and crossed over the top so they stay round.
Cut them with dental floss, not a knife. Slide it under the roll, cross the ends over the top, and pull. Clean spirals every time. A knife just squashes them flat.
6
Place the rolls in a greased baking dish with a little space between them, cover, and leave to rise another 30 to 45 minutes.
7
Heat the oven to 180 °C, top and bottom heat. Bake the rolls 18 to 22 minutes, until the tops are golden brown.
went wrong Pull them at gold, not brown. These are lighter and lower in fat than a classic roll, which means they dry out faster. Thirty seconds too long and they go from pillowy to papery.
8
Mix the quark, icing sugar and vanilla. Let the rolls cool for about 10 minutes, then spread the glaze over them while they are still warm. Best served warm.

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