What is it with cardamom buns, or kardemommesnurre?

The bun that placed Copenhagen bakeries on the gastronomic world map.

Why all the fuss? I am not a trend expert. I know that cardamom buns taste good, especially home baked and just out of the oven, but what is all the fuss about? Why has the world gone crazy for cardamom buns? Even FT-Weekend featured a recipe this week by my great colleague, the food writer Signe Johansen. When I teach baking courses at an Italian cooking school here in Piemonte:

https://casabattaglino.it

they sell out right away, and mostly to young Italians who want to learn how to bake the famous bun at home.

Often, a trend is set when more than one person starts to think about something that is “in the air”. You get a new idea, think about it, then you see it somewhere else unconnected to your own thinking. So, when I in 2010 started testing recipes for my Scandinavian Baking book, published in 2014, my team and I were very excited about the cardamom buns. We practised the shaping, studied Swedish bakeries, and tried lots of other recipes before developing our own. There was an interest, but it was not the driver of my baking book; that was much more the layer cakes, the crips bread, and the Danish rye.

For almost 10 years, cardamom buns have been a favourite in Denmark. It was not always like this. Before the cardamom buns we had cinnamon buns. When I in 2008 published The Scandinavian Cookbook, my cinnamon bun recipe was among the most popular. Cardamom buns were something we had when going to Sweden. I actually did not think about including it because I thought, at that time, the cinnamon was the best.

Cardamom in baking is a very Scandinavian thing for brioche-like doughs, which we call soft yeasted doughs, and we then add cardamom to more-or-less all of them. The taste of cardamom is in Scandinavia connected to home baking, hygge, children’s birthday parties – the smell of, now something good is going to happen.

In 2017 I started planning to open a food space in Denmark, including a bakery. We were going to make both cardamom buns and cinnamon swirls, which we call kanelsnegle, baked with 100% organic on local flour and butter. They should be a morning thing. Why a morning thing and not all day? Because yeasted dough with a lot of butter kind of dries out in 3-4 hours. So, either you bake them throughout the day, or the ones you sell in the afternoon will be a bit too dry. These buns are best just out of the oven.

Growing up in Copenhagen, cardamom buns were not part of the selection at the bakeries. One famous bakery in Sct Pederstræde in central Copenhagen had cinnamon buns, which they called onsdagsnegle, or Wednesday swirls: a yeasted dough bun, lots of cinnamon, and white icing on top. We would go there, spend our pocket money buying the sticky buns, find a space in the sun, and devour them.

Kanelsnegle in bakeries used be a pastry made with laminated dough called wienerbrød. The name is inspired by Wien, or Vienna, where Danish bakers in mid 1800 learned to make croissants, brought it home to Copenhagen, and invented the wienerbrød that later all around the world became known as Danish: laminated dough full of sweet stuff.

I can of course fully support travelling to Copenhagen to eat buns, visit the beautiful city, drink all the good coffee, but do me a favour: try all the other innovative pastry as well. I am not saying, don’t eat the cardamom buns, I’m just saying, if you are a big fan, try them home baked. Then, when in Copenhagen, do try some of all the other amazing pastry. There are lots. Favourites of mine are lemon pastry from Coffee Collective, a spandauer from Flere Fugle in the Nordvest neighbourhood, or something seasonal done by Chiara atApotek 57 close to Nyboder.

KARDEMOMMESNURRE, CARDAMOM BUNS

The cardamom is a big family of different trees with beautiful flowers. The green little aromatic capsule, that I know best and have been baking with for my whole life, is called in latin Elettaria cardamomum. You open this little crisp capsule that protects the seeds and wrangle out the seeds, pound them with a mortar and pestle, and a strong seductive smell takes over the kitchen, both warm and acidic at the same time.

In Scandinavia we use cardamom in a lot of baking, in gløgg (the hot Christmas drink) and in some stews and curing of meat. Apart from India and Saudi Arabia, Sweden and Finland are the big importers of cardamom in the world.

Never use the cardamon powder, always use the capsule and make the powder yourself. This is the only way to get the strong intensive flavour. Try to buy it from a spice shop or a brand that you trust, because there’s a lot of fake spice around. For more info about this, listen to the BBC Food programme.

RECIPE

Makes 14 -16

For the buns

30g fresh yeast or 5 g dry yeast

200ml lukewarm whole milk

1 egg, lightly beaten

500 g plain wheat flour plus more to dust

75 g granulated sugar

1 tsp ground cardamom (from whole)

½ tsp fine salt

100g softened salted butter*

For the filling

100g softened salted butter

150g granulated sugar

3 tsp ground cardamom (from whole)

1 egg, slightly beaten

Start by crushing the cardamom in a mortar until medium ground, then discard the green shell.

For the buns, crumble the yeast into the milk and stir to dissolve, then add the egg. Now mix in the flour, sugar, cardamom and salt. Mix the butter into the dough, then knead well on a floured surface. Put the dough into a bowl, cover with a tea towel and leave to rise in a warm place for 1-2 hours, or until doubled in size.

Make the filling by mixing together the butter, sugar and cardamom. Roll the dough out to make a 60 x 40cm rectangle. Spread the cardamom mixture lengthways over half of the rectangle. Fold the plain side over the filled, then cut lengthways into 2cm strips.

Roll the strip of dough twice round 2 fingers, leave 10 centimetres, pull the dough from the fingers and fold the last strip of dough over across, then secure with the end, and place the bun with end facing down. Place on baking trays lined with baking parchment.

Cover with tea towels and leave to rise again, in a warm place, for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Brush with egg-wash.

Bake the cardamom buns for 25-30 minutes or until golden. Leave to cool on a wire rack before serving.

*If you use unsalted butter, just add a bit of salt to the dough.