Do you like coffee & tea time too? Cardamom buns are an indispensable delicacy among Swedish folks for Fika time. Taking your time for a good coffee or tea and have sweet delicacies. This spiced Swedish bun has an intense floral perfume from cardamom seeds, which works its way into the dough during cooking. Another favourite is the cinnamon bun, where the baking process is the same but having cinnamon as key flavour.
This recipe covers both, a mix of cardamom and cinnamon but having cardamom as the key flavour.
Serves approx. 20 buns, baking time 1:30-2 hrs including rising process.
Tips:
- Flour: use bread flour (hard wheat flower with gluten) or strong flour that contains more protein (tarwemeel/speltmeel) which gives an elastic texture. Do not use all-purpose flour (self-rising flour) as this contains baking powder and is intended for non-yeast recipes e.g. cake and muffins.
- Yeast: use yeast in the recipe and not baking flour
- Cardamom in dough: do not use powder version. If you have pods, then prepare this first in taking out the seeds of the pods as this is quite an effort and time consuming.
- ————- The Dough ————-
- Saucepan
- Whisk
- Big bowl
- Mortar & pestle
- Dough mixer
- Kitchen towel
- Dough roller / rolling pin
- Knife
- Baking paper, baking tray
- 2,5 dl milk
- 25 gram yeast
- 1 Tbsp fresh ground cardamom seeds
- 450-500 gram (7dl) bread flour
- 75 gram butter on room temperature
- 1 dl sugar
- ½ tsp salt
- ————- The Filling ————-
- Small bowl
- Fork
- 100 gram butter on room temperature, butter needs to be soft
- 1dl sugar
- 1 Tbsp fresh ground cardamom seeds
- 1 Tbsp cinnamon powder
- ————- Topping ————-
- Baking / pastry brush
- 2x small bowls
- 1x egg wash
- ½ dl sugar
- ½ dl water
- ½ Tbsp vanilla sugar
- Mix 2 tsp cinnamon and 2 tsp cardamom powder
- Optional: 1dl pearl sugar or chopped almonds
What to do?
- ————- The Dough ————-
- Warm up 2,5 dl milk in a saucepan to finger warm temperature.
- Crumble 25gr yeast into the pan, whisk until it dissolves in the milk and pour the milk over in the big bowl.
- Grind 1 Tbsp cardamom seeds with the mortar & pestle.
- Add the grinded cardamom, 1dl sugar, 450gr baking flour and 75gr butter into the milk bowl.
- Mix the mixture for at least 15min until the dough gets elastic. Halfway mixing the flower, add ½ tsp salt and continue mixing. Add a bit more flower if dough is too wet.
- Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and let it rest for at least 40min. The dough will rise about double its size.
- ————- The Filling ————-
- Mix 100gr butter, 1dl sugar, 1 Tbsp ground cardamom and 1 Tbsp cinnamon powder with a fork. The consistent is difficult to mix in the beginning but when the butter softens, it will make it much easier.
- ————- Prepare Dough ————-
- Prepare baking trays, having baking paper on the bottom.
- The dough is ready when it bounces back by slapping on the dough with your hand palm or fingers. Place the dough on a flat and clean surface. Roll it out to a rectangular shape by using a dough roller.
- Spread the filling in lengthwise on one half over the dough and fold the dough in half lengthwise.
- Gently, press the dough down so that the folded dough sticks together.
- Slice the dough in 1,5cm strips.
- Take one strip and twist it. Lay one end on the surface, then roll the strip over the end and place the other end at the bottom of the bun. See video on the ‘How’ at the bottom of this article. Place the bun on the baking tray.
- Repeat with the stripes and twists until dough is finished.
- Cover the bun tray with a towel and let it rest for 30min.
- Pre-heat the oven on 225°C.
- ————- Topping ————-
- While the buns are resting, make the sugar syrup. Put ½ dl sugar, ½dl water, ½ Tbsp vanilla sugar in a saucepan. Let it simmer until the sugar is dissolved.
- Whisk the egg for the egg wash (beaten egg + little water or milk).
- Brush the buns with egg wash.
- Sprinkle a little bit of the cinnamon & cardamom powder mix on each bun
- Optional: sprinkle a little bit of pearl sugar or chopped almonds on each bun.
- ————- Finally ————-
- Bake the buns in the middle of the oven for approx. 8-10min until the buns are having a golden glow.
- When you take the buns out from the oven, immediately brush each bun with a little bit of sugar syrup. The liquid will evaporate and don’t brush too much as you don’t want soggy buns. The syrup prevents having dry buns when they cool off.
- Let the buns cool off on the rack.
Enjoy your buns with Swedish Fika Time 😋☕️
Share this: