Now, as much as I like cooking and baking, I am not really someone who likes working with dough. That is – except for when I want cardamom buns. For some reason, making and kneading this particular dough does not intimidate or annoy me. Go figure.
It might be because the result is these phenomenally delicious and moist (pardon) buns.
Bake at your own risk and preferably when you are expecting guests. Otherwise you might eat them all in one sitting…
Yields about 24 buns
Ingredients
Dough
- 2 tsp dry yeast (make sure it is fresh)
- 100g // ½ cup sugar
- 230ml // 1 cup warm milk
- 450g // 3 cups flour
- pinch of salt
- 1 tsp cardamom
- 100ml // 85g // ½ cup oil (I use grape-seed)
Filling
- 160g // ¾ cup sugar
- 160g // ⅔ cup room temp butter
- 1 tsp cardamom
- 1 ½ tsp cinnamon
- ½ tsp salt
Wash
- 1 large egg
- 50g // ¼ cup sugar
- 50g // ⅕ cup water
- ½ tsp cardamom
Instructions
- In a bowl, mix together warm milk, sugar and yeast. Let it rest 15 minutes.
- Once the yeast is activated, add it to a large bowl with the flour, salt, cardamom and oil. Mix it all well and then proceed to knead the dough for a good 10 minutes. (When I am lazy I only do 5 minutes, but do as I say not as I do). Then leave the dough in the bowl, place a clean kitchen towel over it and let it rise in a warm space for about an hour. It should almost double in size.
- While the dough is rising, you can prepare the filling by combining the sugar, butter, cardamom, cinnamon and salt in a small bowl.
- When the dough has risen, divide it in half. Dust your surface with some flour, take one of the halves and roll it out to create a rectangle. At its widest, it’s should be about 45-50 cm wide.
- Spread half of the filling all over the rectangle making sure you cover the edges as well.
- Then do an envelope fold: take one of the long edges – for me it’s usually the bottom and fold it two thirds of the way up. Take the top long edge and fold it over the bottom one. Now the rectangle should be 3 times as thick and 3 times skinnier. If this is confusing – give me a call. 😀
- Depending on how you want to do this and also how warm your kitchen is, I might place this folded envelope dough on a big cutting board and place it in the fridge so it’s easier to work with. While it sits in the fridge, do the same with the other half of the dough – roll it out to a rectangle, spread the rest of the filling all over it, do the envelope fold.
- Now let’s create the buns. Start with the dough that’s been waiting the longest. Cut the length of the dough in 12 strips, each about 3 cm wide.
- Take one of the strips and starting from the end that is completely sealed (I.e. where you did the second fold over) leave 1 cm intact and make 2 cuts all the way to the bottom end. You will basically end up with a piece that has 3 equally wide dough trips hanging from the top of it. From that top, create a braid all the way down. You can also stretch out the strips so they are longer and you can create a longer braid.
- Once the braid is formed, roll and tie it into a knot making sure to tuck the ends underneath. Ta – dah! Now you have to do it with the remaining 11 bun pieces. Arrange the buns on baking sheets and leave to rise for 20 minutes.
- Set the oven to 180 C // 355 F and then work with the other half of the dough to make the remaining 12 buns.
- Before going into the oven, beat one egg and lightly wash the buns. Bake for about 25 minutes, turn the pan around and bake for another 5 minutes or until the buns look golden.
- To make the sugar syrup wash, mix together warm water, sugar and cardamom and once the buns are fresh out of the oven, do a light sugar syrup wash over them. Repeat until all buns are baked and soaked.
- They are best enjoyed still warm but will be good also the next day.