Hokkaido Snails

Another post in the Kürbisfest 2023 series.

Hokkaido, a variety developed in Japan, has become very popular in Germany because the shell is soft and edible. (Turns out many varieties have edible shells, but most are quite hard and not to everyone’s taste.) They’re available between August and February everywhere fresh produce is sold, and I really should have bought more this year.

I’ve made these rolls before, recipe as written, with the pumpkin shape. The dough is sweet, with a hint of cardamom, so I thought it would make a good cinnamon roll. In Germany, these are called Zimtschnecke, which literally translates to cinnamon snails, and now you understand the title of this post.

We start by cooking the pumpkin–skin and all!–on the stove and making a puree.

I guess in the US fresh yeast is called “cake yeast”, but I never used it there. It’s in the case by the butter at the supermarket.

It gets added here to some warm milk, and then the puree and the flour and some sugar and spices.

This time I did not press the puree through my wire mesh doohickey, so there are chunks of shell in my dough. It kneaded up and rose just fine, but if you’ve got picky eaters you may not want to skip that step.

Next, soft butter and cinnamon sugar on the rolled-out dough. I could have used a lot more of both.

After another short rise, into the oven.

And it’s just that simple.

These would be really good with a cream cheese frosting. I was going to make some the next day, then we started eating the rolls plain, and they were good enough. (“Can you be more lazy?” “Challenge accepted.”)