Recipe: Karen Martini’s Cinnamon and Cardamom-Laced Buns Are the “Best of Both Worlds”

Karen Martini is on a roll. The celebrated Melbourne restaurateur, cookbook author and TV presenter just dropped two new cookbooks – Cook: Green and Cook: Sweet – and she’s got two more coming out soon.

This bake comes from the latter, a love letter to desserts spanning ambitious weekend bakes to simple, everyday puddings. Here, Martini marries two of Sweden’s most-loved baked goods: cardamom buns and cinnamon rolls. “I’m running with a best-of-both-worlds approach, with the exotic flavours of fragrant cardamom, coupled with the warming and comforting tones of cinnamon,” she writes.

In Sweden, knotted spiced buns are practically a national dish – locals queue for cardamom-laced kardemummabullar and cinnamon-scented kanelbullar at bakeries, and make them at home on weekends. Martini’s version weaves both into one pillowy dough as a comforting dish that will fill your kitchen with its scent all day.

Martini just has one tip for the spices: source them fresh or grind them yourself. “Cardamom loses its intensity very quickly once ground,” she notes.

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Karen Martini’s cinnamon and cardamom buns

Makes 16

Prep time: 40 minutes, plus 3 hours to chill and prove

Cooking time: 17 minutes

Ingredients

Cardamom dough

330ml full-cream milk

7g dried yeast

600g plain flour, plus extra for dusting

60g caster sugar

65g demerara sugar

85g unsalted butter, softened at room temperature

1 tbsp ground cardamom

1 tsp fine sea salt

Cardamom butter filling

250g unsalted butter

100g caster sugar

100g demerara sugar

2 tbsp ground cardamom

3 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp salt flakes

To serve

1 egg, beaten with a pinch of salt

60g caster sugar

60g demerara sugar

3 tsp ground cardamom

2 tsp ground cinnamon

Method

For the dough, slightly warm the milk in a small saucepan, then add the yeast and set aside for 5 minutes for the yeast to activate and foam.

Add the milk mixture to the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with the dough hook, along with the remaining dough ingredients. Mix on slow speed for 2 minutes. Increase the speed to medium and mix for 3 minutes, then beat a little faster for 5 minutes, until you have a very smooth dough.

Tip the dough onto a clean bench and press out into a rough 20cm x 30cm rectangle. Place on a tray, cover with a tea towel and chill for 2 hours.

For the filling, add all the ingredients to a large bowl and mix, with a spoon, into a smooth paste. Set aside at room temperature.

Line two baking trays with baking paper.

Tip the dough onto a lightly floured bench, then roll out into a rectangle measuring about 40cm x 50cm. As you roll, pause, as the dough will contract, then roll again until the right size. Dollop the filling over the dough, then spread out evenly using an offset spatula. From the short side, fold one-third of the dough over to cover the middle third, then the other side over that in a letter fold. Press flat gently with your hands and scrape off any filling that oozes out. With a folded edge facing you, cut into 16 pieces.

Take one length, which will be about 30cm long. Stretch it out to about 45cm, then wrap it around your fingers into a coil and then, when you are nearing the end, use the last part to wrap around the coil over the top of your fingers, slipping it off at the same time and tucking the end into the middle. Place on one of the baking trays and repeat for the other lengths. These may look a little messy, but they will fill out when they rise a little more during proving and baking. Cover with a tea towel and set aside for 1 hour to prove.

Preheat the oven to 230°C.

Brush the buns with the egg wash, then combine the sugars, cardamom and cinnamon, and sprinkle on top of each bun.

Bake for 11 minutes, then reduce the oven temperature to 180°C and bake for a further 6 minutes, until the buns are golden brown, and the sugar and butter surrounding each bun is lacy in appearance.

Cool completely on the tray. As the buns cool, each will have its own little sugar bottom to enjoy.

Notes

The buns are best enjoyed just baked, or on the same day, but can be reheated the following day.

This is an edited extract from Cook: Sweet by Karen Martini published by Hardie Grant Books on May 1, 2026. Photography by Armelle Habib.