Breakfast Club: Finnish Blueberry-Filled Buns (Mustikkapiiraat)

Helen at Fuss Free Flavours started Breakfast Club last year, but this is my first time to participate. Thanks to Nayna at simply.food for hosting Breakfast Club #12: Berries.

Finnish Blueberry Buns

I fully intended to post a recipe for my adaptation of this recipe (I made it in the bread machine), but I think I need another go-round. I loved the idea of putting cardamom in the dough, but I don't think there was enough, because I couldn't taste it at all. Also, the blueberry filling wasn't as tasty as I had hoped. It has a whopping 1 tablespoon of cornstarch in it and I could definitely taste it. They're not bad, but they're not as good as I hoped they would be, but they're promising enough to tweak a bit and try again.

The recipe is from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book by Beatrice Ojakangas, which I picked up in Lindsborg ("Little Sweden USA") in December when Paul and I drove up there for the St. Lucia festival. It's a really cute little town that has a wonderfully preserved downtown that's very pedestrian-friendly. Lindsborg is about 72 miles north and a bit west of Wichita and 20 miles south of Salina.  It's cold there in December.

Naturally, I didn't take my camera, but here's a photo I found on flickr of Lindsborg's Main Street in the summer. The little painted horse is one of many "Wild" Dalas in downtown Lindsborg. You can click on the photo to enlarge.



This is where we had a yummy lunch, a cinnamon roll and lots of coffee:


Another of the dalas:



We also visited the McPherson County Old Mill Museum which included a tour of the town's old flour mill:


We had a really awesome tour guide who currently works at one of the flour mills in Salina. He was one of the most knowledgable history museum guides I've ever met.

My favorite part of the museum, though, was the charmingly absurd and slightly creepy cabinet of curiosities directly past the museum gift shop (where I bought the cookbook). There's an entire room full of mangey taxidermal examples of local wildlife from birds to bobcats. Everyone else did a quick once-over, commented with disgust and moved on.  Paul and I examined every sparrow, snake and skunk. To us, it went a little way toward making up for the fact that we hadn't heard of Deyrolle until after we had been to Paris. Alas, I could find no photos online. I guess I'll just have to go back and take some in a crafty manner. I promise not to use a flash.