I’m tired of chocolate.
Just kidding. But lately I’ve been using it more judiciously. Chocolate at our house is something we only get to eat if we take a nap. So I’m not going to trot chocolate out for any old occasion. Only really, really special events like one hour of uninterrupted time to myself while E is asleep.
Our traditional Valentine’s Day chocolate ganache tart with fresh raspberries is a no go this year, but I still want to do something with raspberries. Next to chocolate my favourite food to combine with raspberries is almond. Almond cream (sometimes called frangipani cream) is as effortless as it is delicious and goes with any fruit.
I’ve eaten almond cream baked in tart shells more times than I want to count, but I’ve always wondered if it could be used in other ways, such as baked into a cake or bread. I decided to bake it into a sweet roll with raspberry jam and shape the rolls into hearts in honour of Valentine’s Day.
The process is a bit messy, but worth the effort, and while these rolls won’t replace my chocolate ganache tart permanently, they are a fun alternative to cinnamon buns.
I used this sweet dough recipe from Micheal Smith, but any sweet dough recipe should work.
Ingredients: Filling
1/2 cup butter
1/3 cup sugar
1 cup almond flour
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 tablespoons flour
1/2 cup raspberry jam (plus more for topping)
Steps:
- Prepare sweet dough according to instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F
- Cream butter, sugar, and almond flour until well combined
- Mix in almond extract, vanilla extract, eggs, flour until a smooth mixture forms
- Roll sweet dough into a 12×18 inch rectangle
- Spread 1/2 cup raspberry jam over dough
- Spread almond cream over dough
- Roll each long end of the dough towards the other until they meet in the middle
- Cut length of dough roll into 12-16 even slices
- Pinch each slice into a heart shape and arrange in a round buttered cake pan, point of the heart towards the middle (the number of hearts per pan will depend on pan size)
- Bake for 40-45 minutes
- Top each bun with a dollop of raspberry jam (optional)
sweet and pea 
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