Swedish Cardamom Buns Recipe (2024)

Let the dough rest after you mix the flour with the wet ingredients to give the flour time to absorb the fluid. About three minutes will do. Also, use microwave to warm the milk (no need to dirty up another saucepan.) I always use a thermometer to test the temp. Anything over 120 F will kill the yeast. Buns are finished baking when internal temp is 200F. Anything over 212F will be very dry. (212F creates steam and all moisture escapes)

If you're like me, and you have a hard time picturing the shaping process, take a look here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0g8hyUGcvk

I always grind my cardamom with a small mortar and pestle. I have been cooking with cardamom most of my life and have never bought the spice already ground. I make a Finnish variety of cardamom buns every Christmas. The recipe calls for much less cardamom. Commercially ground cardamom is so much duller in flavor that more of it is needed--but I'm still having a hard time believing that this recipe calls for 4 Tbs. of the ground. I use 2 tsp for the other recipe.

Cardamom tip: you can buy the seeds (green husks removed) from Indian grocers. Then just keep them in a dedicated pepper grinder — so you can add it easily to any recipe.

If you want to taste some amazing cardamom buns and are on the West Coast, go to Sparrow Bakery, in Bend Oregon and ask for their ocean rolls. They are famous for them and are perfectly delicious.

Is there a good video online of how to do the twisting of the buns? The description is tough to parse.

Just made as written. The photo shows what appears to be a lunch-plate size bun. Cutting and wrapping 1”x12” strips of dough yields buns of about 4” diameter, so quite a bit smaller than what is pictured. This is fine, but the oven temps and time specified practically incinerate them at this size. 375/325 is much better. I also question the two minutes’ knead time and then only one hour rise total. The texture is not what it should be IMO. More kneading, longer rests/rises.

The problem is not the oven. The problem is that the recipe calls for twice as much butter as you actually need. My buns were hemorrhaging butter in the oven.

Regarding Step 14: Why grind the whole cardamom pods? For easier work, either buy "decorticated" cardamom (Frontier Foods sells it in bulk), which is the black/sometimes brown seeds already out of their green pods, or remove the pods before you grind the seeds. I just cut off a small bit of the pointy end/tip of the pod and peel it open (using the same knife) in order to take out the seeds. With a little practice, this is not time-consuming.

The Fabrique buns have more cardamom than other versions; they're special. In order to replicate that intensity at home, you really do need a lot of the ground spice (trust me, I couldn't believe how much I was adding when I made them, but ultimately, they needed it). If you use just the seeds or even the whole pods (ground), you can use less, but you're still going to want a lot more than 2 tsp! I'd start with 2 tablespoons (1 tablespoon in the dough and 1 tablespoon in the filling)

Where to start? The butter can easily be halved. There was an oven fire from the oozing filling, and the buns essentially fried in the butter that leaked out. After surviving the harrowing ordeal of being singed, and deep fried, the buns emerged with a dense and heavy crumb. An overnight rise is absolutely necessary. If you have $20 and a few hours to waste in labors of disappointment, by all means make these cardamom rolls!

Assuming one is willing to remove the seeds from the cardamom pods and crush them coarsely with a mortar and pestle (which is what I always do when I use cardamom), how much would one need? Surely not the four tablespoons called for in the recipe. Also, grinding up the husks strikes me as a terrible idea.

These are very good. I made a small batch of 8 mini buns by quartering the recipe. I used only half of the butter amount recommended for the filling so that the filling doesn't seep out everywhere and I think that works well. I also brushed the top of the baked buns with honey and sprinkled some chopped up pepitas / pumpkin seeds (very autumnal) on top for extra crunch and a pop of color.

My suggestion, for a better mouthfeel, in keeping with traditional Swedish recipes— Omit the egg wash. Instead, make a more concentrated simple syrup glaze (1:1, but let it simmer 5 min). Immediately after taking the buns from the oven, generously brush the glaze onto the buns before sprinkling with the cardamom sugar. This will lend a beautiful chewiness and slight crisp, and reheats wonderfully in a toaster oven.

Oh, many mediterranean markets sell cardamon in bulk so you can buy as little or as much as you want. It also tends to be fresher. Adding pistachios is yummy too.

I used fresh cardamom so halved all the measurements and otherwise followed the recipe exactly. So delicious!

This recipe is perfection! Love the caramel that is made from the run off butter and sugar. I make this as a star shaped pull apart makes it much easier than individual ones and looks great. For me this recipe is perfection just as is. Don’t get hung up on the suggested shape make what easiest for you.

This is one of the best pastries I have made if done right. Here are some tips I learned by making this three times: do not bake at 450 degree temperature. It torched my first batch and made it inedible. Bake at 400 degree for the first 7 minutes and lower to 375. Also, I used 1 & 1/2 cups of milk instead of 1&1/4 and viola, the texture of the dough was much better and the buns expanded more.

The end result was so delicious and looked gorgeous, but i bakes in 2 batches - the first at the given temperatures, which incinerated the buns and burned the sugar. I cooked the second batch at 190c for 12 mins and 175c for a further 5 (as someone recommended in the notes). The second batch were perfect- minimal leaking butter and no burn. I also did an overnight cold proof on the dough and left them to rise for 2 hours when formed. Will make again, but this recipe needs amending!

Baker beware! This is far too complicated and despite reducing the butter to 1.75 cups (used only 3/4 of that amt), there was still too much butter. Call me naive, but I would have thought this recipe would have been revised given all the prior feedback.

I have the butter and they were miserably sweet and saturated with butter and sugar. Stick to Norwegian or Swedish bread recipe for doing this. This doesn’t work.

I found these a little tricky..the dough is definitely a little different than your standard yeast dough. Timing the second rise, I felt unsure of what to expect or how long to let them go. An hour did not feel sufficient, but the sugar started weeping so I put them in earlier than maybe I should have. Second sheet fared better with a little extra time to rise. I think I was also too aggressive stretching/twisting. Less was more.

Just another person agreeing with the decision to halve the butter! For those who want to prep this the day before baking, I ended up going through the process all the way through shaping the buns, placed on trays covered in plastic wrap in the freezer for the rest of the day and switched them to the fridge to thaw overnight. Let them sit out for an hour and proofed on the [off] stove while the oven preheated. Then eggwash, sprinkle w/ cardamom, and bake (~ a couple extra min). Delicious!!

Roll buns, cover with plastic and then the next morning let them puff in an oven with a boiling bowl of water for 30 before baking.

In an effort to make the texture similar to Lucia rolls, used bread flour and kneaded in a stand mixer until it passed the windowpane test. 1/2 cardamom and 1/2 cinnamon in the filling. In YouTube videos for shaping, I noticed that the professional bakeries put down a thin layer of soft butter and then sprinkled on a dry filling - going to try this next time, although using 1/2 the butter as recommended by others worked fine. And yes, there will be a next time. Maybe next week!

Bake until browned

Do you put both sheets in the oven at the same time? Or one sheet, turn the temp down, turn it back up, other sheet, down again?

Delicious buns, though I agree with other commenters that the amount of butter really should be halved. The buns still come out of the oven with a beautiful sugar crisp on the bottom—if I had used the given amount, they would be swimming in butter and likely inedible. Also agree with others that the 375/325 temp adjustment is a good idea, and a simple syrup coating after baking is preferable to an egg wash, but with those tweaks, a good recipe. Found the shaping instructions easy to follow.

I have frozen them successfully and reheated individually for 30 seconds…

As someone who has made many visits to the Fabrique bakery locations in London, I can confirm this recipe is almost indistinguishable from the real thing. Lovely and very forgiving!