Baker draws on family recipe to craft blue-ribbon sweet rolls

Rick Gustafson has taken a family recipe, tweaked it, and turned it into a prize winner at the 2024 Minnesota State Fair.

Gustafson, of Ramsey, won a blue ribbon for his sweet rolls.

It all started with a recipe that has been in his family for generations.

“I have a recipe for bread that is passed down from my grandma that I think actually came over from Sweden,” he said.

Gustafson, who works as a graphic designer, said during the COVID-19 pandemic he was at home and decided to make something different for his family. He looked at a number of YouTube cinnamon roll videos to get ideas and came up with his prize-winning sweet rolls based on his grandma’s bread recipe. They were a hit, and people told him he should sell them.

He’d never considered the idea, but decided to try it and now sells his sweet rolls at places like craft fairs and a flea market.

Then he thought, why not enter the State Fair?

He first entered the fair in 2022, topping his sweet rolls with a cream cheese frosting and winning honorable mention. Last year he reworked the sweet rolls into a twist and won a blue ribbon. He reworked them again for this year’s fair, putting them back into a roll form and topping them with a light glaze and a larger grain sugar.

The result was a blue-ribbon success story.