It would be an exaggeration to say that I’ll add cardamom to anything – but only slightly.
Truly, I love most of the classic baking spices. Cinnamon sparkles on the tongue, nutmeg seduces with its alluring perfume, allspice dresses up the simplest cake, ginger adds a delicious fire. But cardamom has a special grip on me.
So I add it to everything. I add it to oatmeal, to fruit compote, to coffee. I sprinkle it on top of buttery toast, peanut buttery toast, chocolatey toast. Whenever I bake, a small voice whispers to me, “would this be better with cardamom?” Often the answer is “probably,” so I also add it to muffins, brownies, shortbread, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, berry cakes, peach crumbles, coffee cakes, granola, challah, cinnamon rolls, and caramel sauce.
And perhaps I can convince you to add cardamom to everything, too.
What does cardamom even taste like?
As with most flavors, it’s hard to describe how cardamom tastes. The Flavor Bible describes cardamom as “sweet” and “pungent,” with a heating function and a loud volume. According to the Bible, cardamom goes particularly well with chicken, cinnamon, coffee, coriander, curries, dates, ginger, Indian cuisine, lamb, orange juice and zest, rice and rice dishes, and tea.
But if you have not yet experienced cardamom’s sweet pungence, I urge you to simply try some yourself: find a bakery that sells cardamom-flavored pastries or buy a bottle of ground cardamom and sprinkle it on a food that provides a quiet backdrop (like oatmeal or rice pudding), sniff deeply, and take a bite.
Gather your supplies
If you (1) have sampled cardamom and (2) are intrigued, it’s worth knowing that you can buy it in a few forms:
Ground cardamom is the most convenient and ubiquitous form, and therefore a good entry-level option. You can find jars of ground cardamom in the spice or baking sections of many grocery stores.
Whole cardamom pods are much less convenient and certainly less ubiquitous than ground cardamom. However, they produce a fresher, more pungent product. To use cardamom in this form, smash the pod using a mortar and pestle or the flat edge of a knife, separate out the seeds, and grind them up using a spice grinder, coffee grinder, or mortar and pestle. Keep the pods whole to steep them in things, like milk for chai or cream for ganache.
whole decorticated cardamom seeds are the perfect form factor for my needs, but they are the hardest to find. “Decorticated” simply means that the seeds have been freed from their husks already. All you have to do is grind as much as you need.
How to dip your toe in
Cardamom plays well with many other flavors; but for the cardamom neophyte, I recommend adding it to baked goods with “spice” in their name: pumpkin spice muffins, pain d’epices, molasses spice cookies, gingerbread, et al.
However, cardamom really sings against a fairly quiet background, especially one that is creamy or buttery. So the next step is to add it to something “plain” like vanilla cake, rice pudding, or shortbread – I particularly love shortbread with coarsely-ground cardamom and a bit of extra salt. Make cinnamon rolls, but swap out the cinnamon for cardamom. Coat plain pound cake with cardamom-spiked sugar. Fold some into soft, yeasted rolls and serve them with jam and butter.
How to swim in cardamom
Once you’re ready to truly plunge into cardamom fandom, try pairing it with bolder flavors. Cardamom can stand up to strong partners – it loves coffee, chocolate, citrus, raspberries, pistachios, even fiery alcohols like whiskey.
How to meet your limit
Surprisingly, I have had sometimes had too much cardamom. As with all things, a really high concentration is unpalatable. But it is instructive to run up against this limit every now and then, if only to increase the probability that you’re experiencing the full range of how cardamom’s character shifts with its concentration.
The savory frontier
While I have extensively sampled cardamom in sweet applications, I too am a neophyte when it comes to savories. The Flavor Bible tells me that it loves salmon, chickpeas, lentils, and some meats that I don’t eat (such as lamb and chicken) as much as it loves sweet and creamy ingredients. Clearly, I have some exploring to do.
A recipe for julekake
As a parting gift, I leave you with “my” recipe for julekake (which I mostly pinched from my husband). Julekake is a soft, Scandinavian bread with a texture similar to challah or brioche, and is studded with cardamom and dried fruit. It’s often eaten at Christmastime (in Norwegian, julekake translates to something like “Christmas cake”) but is the kind of cozy bake that pairs well with a mug of tea throughout the fall and winter.
Ingredients
2 eggs, at room temperature
120 grams whole milk, at room temperature
355 grams all-purpose flour
6.7 grams instant yeast
67 grams granulated sugar
9 grams salt
2 teaspons freshly-ground cardamom (or 3 teaspons ground cardamom from a jar)
125 grams sourdough starter
53 grams softened butter
106 grams dried fruit (I like dried cherries and/or apricots)
Instructions
Combine the eggs, milk, flour, yeast, sugar, salt, cardamom, and sourdough starter in the bowl of a stand mixer.
Mix with a paddle attachment until the dough comes together in a shaggy mass (roughly 3 minutes).
Switch to a dough hook attachment and knead the dough until it smooths out (another 3-5 minutes).
With the mixer running, add in the softened butter, about a tablespoon at a time. Wait for the dough to absorb each piece before adding the next one. Continue in this way until the butter is completely incorporated into the dough (about 10 minutes) and then continue mixing until it becomes sticky, soft, and a bit shiny (up to 15 more minutes). At this point, the dough should have the soft but slightly-elastic texture of an earlobe (credit to Joanne Chang for that line).
Add the dried fruit and mix until it is fully dispersed throughout the dough (depending on your mixer, it may be easier to do this by hand).
Transfer the dough to a buttered bowl or container, cover it, and leave it to rise for about 1.5-2 hours (or until it has roughly doubled in volume).
Punch the dough back down and divide it into 9 equal portions. Roll each portion into a ball and line them up three by three in a buttered 8”x8” pan.
Cover the pan with plastic wrap (or tuck the entire pan into a clean garbage bag) and refrigerate overnight.
In the morning, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and take the rolls out of the fridge to temper on the counter for about 20 minutes.
Brush the tops of the rolls with milk or cream.
Bake for around 30-40 minutes, until the tops are golden (but not too dark) and the internal temperature of the roll in the center of the pan is around 190 degrees Fahrenheit.
Allow the rolls to cool for about 5 minutes, then serve them, still steaming, with butter and jam or marmalade.
