I’m so excited about today’s recipe as I’ve been meaning to tackle it for a while and I never quite got to it in time, in time for Shrove Tuesday (which falls, a little early this year, on the 16th of February) as this is when these beautiful cardamom buns get very very popular in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland and Estonia! That’s right, while the UK gorges itself on pancakes, the Scandinavian lot stuff their faces with marzipan filled cream buns. I know which camp I am in!
These photogenic little buns are very far from being vegan traditionally so I’ve decided to rectify this and offer my fellow vegans a plant-based take on these beauties. The dough is traditionally enriched with butter and milk, which I simply swapped out for almond milk and a smidge of fragrance free coconut oil but vegan butter works just as well. Once baked, the buns are carved and filled with marzipan (Duncan is a very happy bunny these days and he loves marzipan and he has already had a bunch of these), which often contains raw eggs and topped with a generous amount of whipped cream, which is as unvegan as it gets. My initial idea was to create a cashew-based cream to top these beauties with but it’s a bit of a faff and while it’s creamy it doesn’t have the lightness of whipped cream. So I’ve also decided to experiment with a much simpler topping and as we found them both satisfying, take your pick. My easy option is to use thick vegan coconut yoghurt as it’s much lighter and while it does taste of coconut, something I was trying to avoid initially, I don’t actually find it jarring with the flavour of cardamom and marzipan. If you cannot get hold of one, you can always make whipped coconut cream yourself from a well chilled can of full fat coconut milk. Failing that, I’ve included a recipe for cashew coconut cream stiffened with agar agar, which is creamy, indulgent and with a more neutral taste. I’ve opted for making these guys quite small as I love small things and my rationale is that they are already really indulgent and if you really want to go into a semla-induced food coma, you can certainly have more than one. I hope you’ll give these buns a crack and enjoy them as much we have.
100 g / 1 cup finely ground almonds / almond flour 75 ml / 5 tbsp maple syrup OR 40 g / 5 tbsp icing sugar (+ plant milk) a good pinch of ground cardamom ½ tsp almond extract 1 tsp vanilla extract
CREAM simple version
350 g / heaped 1½ cups thick coconut yoghurt (I used The Coconut Collaborative), chilled or whipped coconut cream* 2 tbsp icing sugar (optional)
CREAM
210 g / 1 cup coconut cream* 130 g / 1 cup raw cashews, soaked in boiling water for 30 minutes 2 tbsp icing sugar or maple syrup (optional) 2 tsp agar powder
CREAM simple version CREAM ASSEMBLY
