Kanelsnegle (With Wienerbrødsdej)

A Recipe With an Added Challenge!

Kanelsnegle, or cinnamon snails, are a staple of Danish pastry and by far one of our favorite treats of all time. In fact, our first recipe we posted on this website (now two whole months ago!) was for kanelsnegle – check it out here. But that version was with a simple enriched, yeast dough; today, we’re going for the more complicated version made with wienerbrødsdej!

So, what exactly is wienerbrødsdej? It’s similar to puff pastry, but the dough is yeasted. You start with a yeasted, enriched dough, similar to the one in the original kanelsnegle recipe, but then you laminate it. This means you fold butter into the dough to create 27 total layers, and these are what make the final product delicious and flaky. Read more about the process in our spandauer recipe or our base danish pastry dough recipe.

We now have two pastry dough recipe on our website: the 6 hour faster version and the original, overnight proofing version! Either one is delicious, and while laminating dough is a bit of a project, it’s a great activity for the weekend!

Tips and Tricks

(copied from our spandauer recipe)

Many things can go wrong in this recipe, so don’t worry if your final product doesn’t turn out perfect. It’ll still be delicious! The biggest problem we face when making these pastries is the butter leaking out when we bake them. This is not great because it results in large gaps in the pastry where the butter has leaked out. The pastries also sit in a pool of butter and often come out fried on the bottom and far too greasy.

So, a few tips to avoid this! First, we would recommend using a European butter with a higher fat percentage. European butter contains less water, and will be easier to work with and more elastic than American butter. However, if this is too expensive, regular old American butter will be fine too. Either way, you want to make sure that your butter is not too cold when you enclose it in the dough. This could cause leakage problems later on, because when you roll it out, the butter may break up and you won’t have smooth sheets of butter between your layers of dough. So, carefully follow the butter folding step (step 6) in our recipe below to avoid this.

Finally, proofing is super important in the process of avoiding butter leakage. Under-proofed or over-proofed pastries will leak butter, so you need to get it as close to perfect as possible. We like to go by look instead of timing, but you should give them at least 2 hours. The pastries should double in size and be almost wobbly when you touch them. Our recipe below includes more info, but pay close attention to these steps if you want the perfect Danish pastry! Leave a comment and a rating below if you make our recipe, and don’t forget to tag us on Instagram if you post a photo!

Kanelsnegle (With Wienerbrødsdej)

5 from 4 votes

Made with yeasted and laminated dough, this version of our cinnamon snails are buttery, flaky, and cinnamon-y! Top them with a simple icing or just enjoy them as they are!

Servings 12 servings

Prep Time 12 hours hrs

Cook Time 15 minutes mins

Total Time 12 hours hrs 15 minutes mins

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IMPORTANT NOTE:

We always bake using a digital scale and the metric system (grams and milliliters). We can’t promise that our cup measurements will be as accurate! Additionally, we bake and develop our recipes in a convection (fan) oven.

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

PASTRY DOUGH

• 1 portion wienerbrødsdej *or you can use the easier recipe below! You only need one portion, so choose one to use!!
• OR 1 portion "easier" wienerbrødsdej (danish pastry dough)

REMONCE (FILLING)

• 113 grams (1 stick) unsalted or salted butter, softened
• 150 grams (3/4 cup) brown sugar
• 1.5 tbsp cinnamon
• Pinch of salt (if using salted butter, don’t add this)

ICING (OPTIONAL)

• Powdered sugar
• Water or milk

Instructions

 

• The night before baking, begin preparing the pastry dough by following the steps in our wienerbrødsdej recipe. Or if using our easier dough recipe, you can begin the same day!
• The next day, continue the steps to laminate the dough from the danish pastry dough recipe.
• While the dough is resting between folds, make your filling by combining softened butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt and stir together until you get a smooth paste.
  
• Once you have completed all the laminations according to the danish pastry dough recipe up to the shaping part and the dough has rested, roll out half of your dough into a flat rectangle that is about 1/4″ thick. By starting with half, it is a lot easier to work with. Trim off the edges if needed to make an even rectangle.
  
• Spread half of the remonce over the dough, making sure to spread it out in an even layer.
  
• Roll it up into a log, starting from the shorter end of the rectangle. This will give your rolls more of a swirl.
  
• Then, cut into either 6 or 8 pastries, depending on how thick you want them to be (it really doesn't matter!).
  
• Place this first batch on a baking sheet and cover to let them start proofing. Then repeat these steps with the second half of the dough, using up the second half of the remonce.
  
• Leave your shaped pastries to rise for at least 2 hours, perhaps longer (we have waited up to three and a half hours for this step!). This is a very important step, because under-proofing these means major butter leakage (we are speaking from experience!) You’ll know the pastries are ready when they feel super light and airy (almost wobbly when you touch them) and have doubled in size. Another test is to poke the dough, and if it leaves an impression and doesn’t spring back immediately, it should be ready.
  
• Towards the end of the rising time, preheat your oven to 375 degrees F (190 C).
• Once your pastries have risen, egg wash them. You can then either sprinkle them with some turbinado/pearl sugar or leave them with just the egg wash.
• Bake for about 15 minutes or until golden brown. You can either bake both baking sheets at the same time if you adjust the oven racks, or bake one at a time on a center oven rack. Baking one at a time will help ensure even baking if your oven tends to have uneven heat on the upper and lower racks.
  
• Combine powdered sugar and water/milk until you reach your desired icing consistency. Remember, a little bit of liquid goes a long way, so start with a cup of powdered sugar and a tiny bit of water or milk! Pour or drizzle over the kanelsnegle and enjoy!

Course: Breakfast, Dessert, Snack

Cuisine: Danish

Keyword: butter, buttery, cinnamon, classic, danish pastry, flaky, traditional, vienna bread, viennoiserie

Difficulty: Advanced