Jam filled Austrian Sweet Buns with Vanilla Sauce

An austrian classic - fluffy and soft sweet buns filled with fruity jam. This heartwarming dish is traditionally served with hot vanilla sauce. Comfort food at it's best!

Ingredients - 22 pieces

For the buns:

500g all purpose flour

42g fresh yeast

300ml milk

2 eggs

2 egg yolks

60g sugar

1 tsp. vanilla extract

a pinch of salt

230g butter

450g jam (f.e. apricot or strawberry)

icing sugar for dusting

For the vanilla sauce:

20g vanilla custard powder

500ml milk

1/2 vanilla bean

2-3 tbsp. sugar

Method

Heat up one third of the milk to 30°C. Crumble fresh yeast, add to the milk and stir until dissolved. Now add 3 tbsp. flour and 1 tbsp. sugar and mix well. Cover and let rest for about 15 minutes at room temperature - it is called "Dampfl" and it should double in size.

Melt 80g of butter and heat up rest of the milk. Mix the "Dampfl", with the rest of the flour, milk, sugar, eggs, egg yolks, vanilla extract, salt and butter in a large bowl and work into a smooth and elastic dough. Cover and let rest for 1 hour at room temperature - the dough should double in size.

Grease a casserole with butter. Melt rest of the butter. Mix jam with 1 tbsp. water and set aside. Punch down dough with your hands and roll out on a flour dusted surface (1/2 cm). Cut out circles (Ø 8cm) using a cookie cutter. Put some jam on each of the dough circles. Seal each circle carfully with your fingers and form little dough balls. Dip dough balls in melted butter and put into the casserole - sealed side down.

Let rest buns in the casserole for another 30 minutes. Heat oven to 170°C and bake buns for about 20 minutes until golden brown.

For the vanilla sauce, mix custard powder with 3 tbsp. milk. Cut vanilla bean in halves and scrape out vanilla pulp with a knive. Mix spare milk, pulp, vanilla bean and sugar in a small pan and bring to a boil. Let simmer at medium heat for 2 minutes. Remove vanilla bean from the pot, stir in custard-milk mix and let cook until sauce thickens.

Dust buns with icing sugar and serve with hot vanilla sauce.