Kardemummabullar (Swedish Cardamom Buns)

My brother, Jerry, is a pastry chef at a four-star hotel/restaurant. Due to the Cornoavirus, he's been able to play around with pastry recipes at work. This recipe (and picture) is his and he graciously let me share it with everyone. I apologize that everything is by weight, but when you're a pastry chef and you have to scale the recipe many times over, weight is the way to go. If you don't have a scale, my husband and I love our Oxo Digital Scale. I promise I do not make a dime off of them. It weighs in both ounces and grams, lights up, and the digital dashboard pulls out to accommodate big bowls. Making this treat is not easy. Anything my brother gives me is never easy. It is, however, worth it! For those not in the know, these are Swedish cardamon rolls. They are complex in flavor and are both sweet and slightly floral due to the cardamom. They are a perfect with a cup of tea or coffee. As my brother likes to say, "they are like a hug from grandma."

Kardemummabullar (Swedish Cardamom Buns)

Ingredients:
Dough
484 g Milk
8 g Yeast
142 g Butter, Softened
50 g Sugar
4 g Cardamom, Ground
870 g Bread Flour
9 g Kosher Salt

Filling
113 g Butter, softened
67 g Sugar
8 g Cardamom, Ground
3 g Salt

Glaze
70 g Sugar
35 g Water
4 g Vanilla paste

Pearl sugar or coarse sugar for top
Yields: 12 large buns

Directions:
1. Put milk in a saucepan with butter and cardamom. Heat until butter starts to melt then remove from heat and stir until butter is melted.

2. Add sugar to milk mixture and stir to dissolve. Once cooled below 85 degrees F add yeast and allow to sit for 5 minutes

3. Add milk mixture to mixing bowl. Add bread flour than kosher salt. Mix for 10 minutes on low/medium speed.

4. Place in a greased bowl and cover. Allow to rise for 1 - 1 1/2 hours or until doubled in size.

5. While dough is rising make your filling by combining all ingredients into a bowl and mixing to form a paste.

6. Once dough has risen, place on well floured surface and roll into a large rectangle. Smear filling all over.

7. Fold into thirds as if you were folding an envelop. Cut 12 equal sized pieces of dough. Then cut each piece down the center leaving an uncut portion at the top. This will look like two really long legs.

8. Gently pull then Spin and twist the dough around your fingers, tucking the extra on the bottom. SEE VIDEO BELOW FOR EXAMPLE!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0g8hyUGcvk

9. Cover and allow to proof for another 1 1/2 to 2 hours or until doubled in size.

10. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 18-25 minutes.

11. While buns are cooking combine glaze ingredients into a sauce pan and bring to a boil. take off heat
.
12. Brush buns with syrup glaze once they come out of the oven. Decorate with coarse or pearl sugar on top.

Dalonga Coffee

Coffee plays an essential role in any Italian-American household. For any major holiday, my grandmother would put on a "pot" of coffee for everyone. I use the word pot in quotations because it was an actual pot. Like something you would see at a catering event. EVERYONE would have a cup, or two or six. It can be 8 at night and my mom will ask me for a cup of coffee. Whenever my twin brother comes over he asks, "Can I get some coffee, Man?" Most of the family enjoys their coffee black, though some do like cream.

Over the last few months, I kept seeing images of something called Dalonga Coffee. I had no idea what it was. As someone who prefers black coffee, I thought it was going to be gross, but after I tried it, I loved it. Essentially, it's an instant coffee cream that is enjoyed over a glass of milk and ice. I thought it might be good on coffee, but it's quite strong and bitter on it's own and I think coffee would enhance that bitterness. It might be good though! The flavor (with the milk) reminds me of a Rhode Island drink called coffee milk. If you liked that, you'd really appreciate this.

This recipe only takes 2 minutes to make and is a 1:1:1 ratio which makes it VERY easy to scale whether you want 1 cup or 10 cups. The recipe below serves 4 people. If this black coffee loving Italian-American can love this drink, you probably will too.

Ingredients:

4 Tablespoon of instant coffee
4 Tablespoon of granulated sugar
4 Tablespoon of near boiling water
Milk or Brewed Coffee

Directions:
Put the instant coffee, sugar, and water into a bowl or container. I use a 4 Cup Pyrex Liquid measure. Using a hand mixer set on medium-high, whip until very thick. Should take only a minute or so. 

Fill a glass up with some ice and add milk until 3/4 filled. Top with a few heaping spoonfuls of the coffee "cream." Let your guests stir it in as it's part of the fun. You could also add it directly to hot coffee or iced coffee, but be warned, I never tried that and I can't vouch for the flavor/taste.

Big Buttermilk Biscuits

As I am writing this post, it's 7:45AM, and I have two biscuits in the oven right now baking. I LOVE breakfast, especially savory breakfasts. I love biscuits with gravy or just some sunny side up eggs. What makes this biscuit so great is lard. Yes, lard. Sure, you could substitute something else but it won't taste the same. There is a unique taste and texture that lard brings to the biscuits. I've tried all shortening, all butter, a butter-shortening mix, a butter-lard mix, and a lard-shortening mix. None are as good as ALL lard in this recipe. I understand that lard may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's easy to find, cheap, and adds flakiness to the biscuits and pie dough. 

If you choose another recipe, let me give you two other pieces of advice. For any biscuit recipe, roll your biscuit dough to an inch, not a half-inch like other monsters on the Internet tell you. Also, crowed them together while baking. I put them in a round cake pan and place them in like petals on a leaf, with one central biscuit in the center. There is maybe a half inch between them. When they bake and rise, they will rise UP instead of out. They pull apart with little to no effort. When you cut them this thick, the baking time will probably be closer to 25 minutes like my recipe says instead of 15. 

Useful tools (but not required): Bench scraper and pastry blender

Big Buttermilk Biscuits

Ingredients:
2 cups of all-purpose flour (Plus more for dusting)
1 tablespoon of baking powder
1 tablespoon of white sugar
1 teaspoon of salt
1/3 cup of lard
1 cup of buttermilk (2% or whole works well too)
A few tablespoons of melted or very soft unsalted butter for brushing on top

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 425-degrees. In a bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, and salt. Add the lard and cut in using a pastry cutter until it resembles a coarse meal. Add the milk and stir with a fork until it comes together. The dough will be very wet - that's what we want. Heavily flour a work surface and dump the dough out. Using a bench scraper, I fold the dough over itself 20 times, lifting the dough and adding flour to the bottom and to the top as needed. You will find the dough will come together and will be much easier to work with after the 10th fold over. I pat the dough out to about 1 to 1.5 inches. Using a 3-inch biscuit cutter (or a drinking glass if you don't have a cutter), cut out your biscuits. When cutting out your biscuits, don't twist the cutter as that can seal the edges and limit its rise. Just press down firmly.

I then place the biscuits into an ungreased 10" cake pan into a flower petal pattern. So, one biscuit in the center, with the other biscuits circling it like petals on a flower. I put them fairly close, but not touching. Why do this? When they bake, they will bake out, until they touch each other (or the side of the pan), and then they will bake up. This will result in a tall biscuit. Brush the tops of the biscuits with butter. Bake for about 22 to 25 minutes (sometimes they need an extra minute, but not usually) until they are golden on top. They make about 6 to 8 biscuits depending on the size.

Freezing: 

These biscuits are pretty damn good frozen and reheated as well. Once your biscuits are baked and cooled, put them into a Ziplock bag and freeze them. When you want to reheat them, set the oven to 350-degrees and wrap each biscuit INDIVIDUALLY with aluminum foil. Once the oven is preheated, place the foil wrapped biscuits directly on the middle oven rack. Bake for 20 minutes.

This is a pastry blender or pastry cutter for those who may be unfamiliar with one.