Creating mother-son memories, thanks to Finnish cinnamon rolls

Try explaining "slapped ears" to a preschooler.

That's the literal meaning of korvapuusti, the Finnish word for cinnamon rolls, an iconic Nordic pastry that's supposed to look like two snails about to butt heads or, to put it in Finnish terms, a pair of ears brought much too close together by some unseen force.

"I want mine to be a croissant," said Rory, my 3-year-old son, perched on a stepstool in our kitchen. I'd just rolled a sheet of dough around a fragrant layer of cinnamon, sugar and butter, then cut the roll into trapezoids with slanted edges that revealed the spirals within. I demonstrated how to push down in the center with the side of my hand, bringing the slanted edges up and toward one another. But when Rory got his stubby little fingers on them, he decimated my careful handiwork, smashing the rolls until they resembled something more like run-over Pop Tarts.

Fortunately, if our baking efforts failed, there was a backup plan. The Upper Midwest has no shortage of places to acquire Nordic pastries, thanks to a significant population of immigrants from the region, including 100,000 Finnish-Americans in Minnesota.

While American cinnamon rolls tend to be lofty with yeast and rich with butter, smothered in glaze or caramel, gooey and supremely sweet, Scandinavian and Nordic bakeries put forth another kind of cinnamon roll.

"It's a little smaller, it's not as tall, and it's not overly sweet," said Madi McCormick, the co-owner of Krown Bakery in Anoka, which specializes in Nordic pastries, including those from Finland. "We want the cinnamon flavor to be the star, and to put a little cardamom in there, too, just to accent the flavor. It's simple, and kind of special."

It's the cinnamon roll that my son and I fell in love with on a mother-son trip to Finland earlier this year.

Rory is my second child, a pandemic baby and a homebody who never got to experience travel the way my first did. For much of his infancy, in 2021, our backyard was the limit.

Without the formative adventures that marked our first child's earliest months, I longed for a deeper connection with Rory rooted in something that was our own. And I was convinced we'd only stumble into the kind of eye-opening experiences, whimsical mishaps and inside jokes that tie us together by leaving our comfort zone and heading out into the world. For no real reason other than that I had never thought to travel there before, and had no expectations that could be dashed by a toddler, I chose Finland.

It turns out, Finland is incredibly child-friendly. And one of its peoples' favorite pastimes happened to be one of ours: coffee breaks. Sitting in a cafe with no apparent agenda and sharing something sweet is how Rory and I start every other morning before preschool dropoff. It's also a deeply ingrained part of Finnish culture, one of the many reasons you could tick off on the list of what makes Finland the happiest country for eight years running.

At the spiced-sugar center of a Finnish coffee break is the korvapuusti, that swirling cinnamon roll.

"Every Finnish child in their childhood has baked and eaten this," said Sofia Uuksulainen, the co-owner of a plant-based bakery and coffee shop in Helsinki, Kahvila Rakastan. In Finland, the pastry is not a calorie-bomb indulgence as it is here; it's an elegant and subtly sweet part of life.

We saw them piled on platters, in windows and at the counters of every cafe we passed. The displays became ever more elaborate and eye-catching; one spot welcomed us with a towering glass cylinder filled with the rolls and topped with a chef's hat, like one of those wacky tube dancers sustaining on dough instead of air.

On our first full day in Finland's capital, we rode one of the city's ubiquitous green trams to an antique-looking house that's home to Kahvila Rakastan, a cafe whose name means "love." The place was opened by two sisters and their mother as an ode to their ancestor, Grandma Meri. She was a beloved home baker who carried her traditions from the Finnish Karelia region to the capital when Karelia officially became part of Russia in 1940. A framed photo of Meri sits in the window of the sunshine-filled cafe.

The family opened one of the only solely vegan bakeries in Helsinki in the hopes of re-creating some sweet memories in accordance with their adopted way of eating.

"When my mother went vegan, she was missing all the childhood flavors and all the Finnish food that we weren't able to have as easily as vegans," Uuksulainen said. "Then we decided to make it ourselves."

Their cinnamon rolls contain oat milk and plant-based butter instead of traditional dairy, and they lack eggs. Uuksulainen also skips the addition of cardamom because she doesn't like it. And, she spirals her rolls on two sides so each one resembles a heart.

No slapped ears here, either.

"There have been many innovations," Uuksulainen said.

Uuksulainen tied an apron around Rory's waist and propped a chair next to the counter so he could climb up to see. She encouraged him to fling flour onto the counter without consequence, arguably one of the highlights of a toddler's life.

She guided him with a rolling pin to shape prepared dough into a long rectangle. Rory slathered glossy plant-based butter all over the rectangle with a spatula. Next came cinnamon sugar, which he sprinkled liberally. Finally, Uuksulainen rolled up the rectangle from top and bottom, meeting in the center. She sliced the roll crosswise and shaped each piece into a heart, "because we are love," she explained.

It was time for the last step. Rory grabbed two fat fistfuls of pearl sugar from a mixing bowl and dropped them onto a single cinnamon roll.

"I don't know what we are making," he said in his tiny singsong voice, content to exist in a world of sweet ignorance that would certainly have its rewards.

When we finally sat down at a table in the back of the cafe to enjoy our warm-from-the-oven treats, Rory was more interested in playing on the floor with a toy cash register and serving us on dollhouse-sized plates and cups. This was Rory's bakery now.

Some of the lessons from Kahvila Rakastan didn't make it back to our Minnesota kitchen that morning we tried to re-create our favorite Finnish treat. Flour went everywhere. Rory ignored the spatula, using his hands to spread the butter, and licking them in between each swipe. He devoured a raw glob of dough before I could stop him. And the shaping of the rolls was a bust.

But there might not be a better sensory experience, or bonding experience, than baking. I would never be able to make cinnamon rolls as perfect as the ones I'd tried in Helsinki, whether or not Rory's stubby little fingers were involved. But if I'd learned anything about parenthood, perfection is an illusion, anyway.

When our homemade, albeit oddly shaped, cinnamon rolls came out of the oven, it was for a coffee break that didn't require flying across the world, or even making a pit stop on the way to preschool. I don't know what we are making, either, but Rory and I are in it together, right here at home.

3 places to get Nordic-style cinnamon rolls in the Twin Cities

They're all shaped a little differently, but the essence of the Finnish/Nordic cinnamon roll is the same wherever you get one: cardamom-inflected dough, smooth and not sticky, bready but never dry, its sweetness imparted from craggy nubs of pearl sugar on top.

Krown Bakery & Eatery

530 W. Main St., Anoka, krownbakeryandeatery.com

Bakers from this Anoka cafe went on a Nordic country tour in 2024 and brought back recipes to add to its stockpile of traditional Nordic pastries. In addition to their cinnamon roll, which is a circular rope of cinnamon-filled cardamom dough, they make Finnish butter eye buns, kringles, Danishes, braided pulla bread, Swedish cakes, Icelandic meringues and more.

The Finnish Bistro

2264 Como Av., St. Paul, finnishbistro.com

This St. Anthony Park mainstay offers more than a full case of pastries. Other iconic Finnish dishes include reindeer sausage, smoked salmon breakfasts, oatcakes and Karelian pies, a thin rye crust filled with porridge and topped with mashed butter and eggs, a specialty from Finnish Karelia.

Fika Café

2600 Park Av. S., Mpls., asimn.org

At the American Swedish Institute, the in-house restaurant specializes in new Nordic cuisine, plus an array of pastries and sweets that highlight flavors like cardamom, lingonberry and almond marzipan.

Make korvapuusti at home

Want to follow in our footsteps? There are plenty of recipes online for Finnish cinnamon rolls. We combined instructions from more than one to create our own. Check out the Foreign Fork, My Blue & White Kitchen, Sisu Homemaker and the Twin Cities' Luumu for inspiration.