Perfect Sweet Buns, With a Swedish Accent
May we present the delicious, the buttery, our moist and tender cardamom bun drizzled with a luscious almond glaze? In this cardamom roll recipe, we started with the world's best cinnamon roll dough. To make things a little more exciting, we added a bit of almond extract, and replaced the traditional cinnamon filling with a heady, rich cardamom version. Finished with a simple almond-scented glaze, these cozy, heavenly buns are our take a traditional and beloved Scandinavian treat—they’re a bit inspired by classic Swedish kardemummabullar, which means (you guessed it) cardamom buns. They’re the perfect light, fluffy morning roll, ready to brighten and warm even the chilliest of winter mornings.
What Is Cardamom?
Cardamom is a spice with a beautifully spicy, floral, unique fragrance that we’d like to dive head-first into and just dwell in forever. Cardamom comes from a plant in the ginger family, and hails from India, where it has been cultivated for thousands of years. That said, many of us associate it heavily with Scandinavia, where it’s been a popular spice since the 9th century. Its strong, floral, peppery, almost minty flavor is delicious in both sweet and savory dishes, though we particularly love it in sweet dishes and holiday baking. For this cardamom bun recipe, you can use pre-ground cardamom, or if you really love the flavor of cardamom and want a powerful dose of it, buy cardamom pods and grind it yourself. If you go this route, you’ll need to shell the pods—simply discard the papery green exterior and keep the black seeds to grind. Then, use a super-clean coffee grinder to grind the cardamom seeds, or use a mortar and pestle.
Everything You’ll Need To Make These Cardamom Buns with Almond Glaze
These rich, tender, buttery cardamom buns aren’t particularly tricky and don’t involve any unusual ingredients—yay! If you’ve made cinnamon rolls before, you’ll be pretty familiar with this whole ingredient list and process. Here’s what you’ll need for this cardamom bun recipe:
- Whole milk
- Vegetable oil
- Sugar
- Almond extract
- Active dry yeast
- All-purpose white organic flour
- Baking powder
- Baking soda
- Salt
- Unsalted butter
- Cardamom
- Powdered sugar
How To Make Cardamom Rolls
If yeasted breads give you the willies, fear not! We’ll walk you through the process. They’re never incredibly fast, but they’re always, always worth it. Is there anything like a homemade piping hot bun, fresh out of the oven? No, no there’s not. Anyway, here’s how to make these lovely cardamom buns:
- Gently warm milk, vegetable oil, sugar and almond extract, and when you see a reading of 110°F, pull it off the heat and sprinkle the yeast on top. Warm milk + sugar will activate the yeast.
- Pour the milk and yeast mixture into a bowl and stir in flour. Let it rise for an hour.
- Stir in baking powder, baking soda, salt and a little more flour. You just made dough!
- Roll the dough into a large rectangle. If it’s sticky, just lightly flour your hands and keep working.
- Mix the filling! This’ll just take a sec.
- Spread the filling! Cover the entire surface of the dough.
- Roll the roll! Roll it up tightl as you can. Use both hands and work slowly.
- Slice the rolls! Place the sliced rolls in prepped pans.
- Raise the rolls! While the oven preheats, let the rolls rise for 20 minutes.
- Bake the rolls! 13-17 minutes at 375° F.
- Mix up the almond icing.
- Drizzle icing over the finished rolls and eat up!
Tools You’ll Need:
More Holiday Treats To Try
When Bloggers Party: It’s a Food-Splosion Holiday Brunch, PDX-Style
A big thank you to Tillamook and Bob’s Red Mill for giving us and the rest of the creative women involved in #HolidayBrunchPDX a reason to come together and create some beautiful holiday brunch treats together. We’re so glad to finally be sharing these cardamom rolls with you, because we know there were quite a few bloggers at our last holiday brunch who were eager to get their hands on this recipe, just as we’ve been dying to get our hands on the recipes for the dishes others shared. Please check out all all the recipes for the deliciousness that was #HolidayBrunchPDX, graciously sponsored by Bob’s Red Mill & Tillamook, to get some amazing brunch inspiration just in time for the holidays.
Caramelized Onion Chanterelle Mushroom Quiche with Gluten Free Buckwheat Crust
