Sweet Lemon & Cardamom Rolls ~ sweet, sticky, tangy, aromatic yeasted buns ideal for breakfast, brunch or dessert!
Made using part whole wheat flour they have more substance than your regular white and fluffy cinnamon rolls which means they should keep you satisfied for longer, they are also refined sugar-free. I used unrefined cane sugar i.e. golden cane sugar. I’m not saying they are everyday healthy, just healthier.
I adapted Sally’s sweet lemon rolls, let me show you how….
First, I always, always use strong bread flour when making any type of sweet yeasted bun as I prefer the final texture and you are almost guaranteed a better rise, providing you (or better let your stand mixer handle it) knead the dough long enough.
Mix strong white and strong whole wheat bread flour together, set 1/2 cup aside which we will use later, add salt to the main flour bowl and mix in the salt – I use a knife, any knife for this (including the bpa free toddler type) for this but again you can let your mixer do it if you prefer. Add yeast and sugar together and mix in thoroughly and then….
add 1/4 tsp turmeric, purely for colour and something I picked up from Maryam when I made her cinnamon rolls.
I say the turmeric is for colour, I wanted a light yellow colour like before but as I used some whole wheat flour instead of all white, I ended up with a greenish colour instead. No problem as we are adding green cardamom to these rolls, they are allowed to be a weird shade of browny greeny yellow.
Freshly ground cardamom gets added to the flour mix and mixed in. Notice no lemon has been added? that will come later in the filling.
Milk, water and butter get gently warmed by a given a quick blast in a microwave, cut your butter into small cubes if you want it to melt before the milk and water are warm. Add warmed liquid to the flour mix along with an egg, which decided to sink and not show its beautiful yolk and mix.
Ah, now this looks better. You can actually see the streaks of egg yolk. Stir to form a dough, adding some or in my case, all of that flour we set aside earlier.
Once your mixture comes together, knead for 7-8 minutes. I recommend using your stand mixer fitted with dough hook attachment for this as it’s an enriched dough, meaning it’s soft and would be difficult to knead without using lots of extra flour.
You need to knead (pun intended) whole wheat flour a little longer than regular white flour and this is how the dough looked after 7 minutes kneading.
As the dough is still a little on the wet and sticky side it’s better to use a silicone spatula to coax it into a rough ball shape, cover bowl with cling film and let the dough ‘rest’ for 10 minutes while you prepare the filling. Unlike most sweet yeasted buns that get 2 rises, these are only going to have one.
Prepare part of the filling by mixing together with a fork granulated sugar, zest of 2 lemons and some vanilla extract or better still if you have vanilla pods, scrape the seeds of 1/2 a pod in here instead.
Filling ready, dough ‘rested’, time to get rolling. Roll the dough into a rectangle, spread with butter, sprinkle over sugar mix in an even layer, I left a border without any filling hoping that no filling would escape once it was rolled but it did anyway so you may as well cover the whole thing in buttery sugary goodness.
Roll up, roll up lengthways not from the width side as I did (does what I just said make any sense?), you will get a tighter spiral and end up with more rolls (10 rather 8), I’m sure I’ve made this mistake before but I did it again, without realising until after the fact.
Place rolls in a lightly buttered round baking dish, loosely cover dish with cling film and leave to rise until doubled in size, 60-90 minutes. I had a roll that wouldn’t fit in the dish so I stuck it in a cupcake case then in a muffin pan to rise.
Sprinkle with extra lemon zest before baking for 25-30 minutes.
Cover baking dish with tin foil after 15 minutes to avoid over browning. I didn’t have any tin foil at home so placed a piece of baking paper over the rolls. I should have secured said baking paper around the edge of the dish, obviously it moved and a couple of my rolls got a little burnt!
By using unrefined golden granulated sugar in the filling instead of caster it didn’t all melt in with the butter which I loved as it gave the rolls a bit of a crunchy top among all the softness, as I said before these rolls have substance.
I made Sally’s cream cheese lemon frosting with unrefined sugar but it curdled, I think that was due to the large amount of lemon juice or maybe it was my poor choice of laughing cow cheese, in my defence it was the only cream cheese I had in the refrigerator, so I made a regular glaze instead with the juice of 1/2 a lemon instead of 2.
A sprinkle of lemon zest and ground cardamom to finish and there you have one fine-looking (I’m excluding the burnt ones) breakfast / brunch / dessert.
Ingredients
- 150g strong wholemeal bread flour
- 195g strong white bread flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 45g golden granulated sugar
- 1 x 7g package fast-action dry yeast
- 1/4 teaspoon turmeric
- 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
- 120ml water
- 60ml milk
- 40g unsalted butter
- 1 large egg
- 60g unsalted butter
- 150g golden granulated sugar
- zest of 2 lemons
- 1/4 teaspoon halal vanilla extract (or the seeds of 1/2 vanilla pod)
- 125g golden icing sugar
- juice of 1/2 lemon
- lemon zest
- ground cardamom
Instructions
- In a large bowl, toss the flours, set aside 1/2 cup of the flour mix. mix in salt, then sugar and yeast together, turmeric, then cardamom until evenly dispersed. Set aside.
- Heat the water, milk, and butter together in the microwave until the butter is melted and the mixture is warm to touch. Stir the butter mixture into the flour mixture. Add the egg and only enough of the reserved flour to make a soft dough. I needed all the 1/2 cup, but you may need the less (depends on climate etc). Knead for 7-8 minutes using stand mixer fitted with dough hook or 10 minutes by hand (oil workbench and hands). Gather the dough together in the bowl, cover bowl and allow to rest for 10 minutes.
- In a medium bowl, combine the sugar, lemon zest, and vanilla. Stir it around until thoroughly mixed.
- After the dough has rested for 10 minutes, roll it out into a 14×8 inch (36 x 20cm) rectangle on a lightly floured surface. Spread the softened butter on top. Sprinkle the lemon sugar filling all over. Roll up the dough tightly(start from one of the longest sides). Cut into 8-10 even pieces and place in a lightly greased 9-inch round pan. I used a 24cm pie dish, lightly coated in butter.
- Loosely cover the rolls with aluminum foil and allow to rise in a warm, draft-free place for 60-90 minutes. I put them in the cupboard.
- 10-15 minutes before proving time is up, preheat the oven to 375F/190C/Gas Mark 5. Sprinkle uncooked rolls with additional lemon zest at this point, if desired. Bake rolls for 25-30 minutes until lightly browned. Cover the rolls with aluminum foil after 15 minutes to avoid heavy browning.
- Right before serving, top your sweet lemon and cardamom rolls with the lemon icing. In a large bowl sieve the icing sugar add lemon juice and mix. Glaze warm rolls and sprinkle with additional lemon zest and cardamom, if desired.
- Rolls are best enjoyed the same day, but will remain fresh covered tightly for up to 4 days in the refrigerator.
