When Europeans first began returning from the East with spices, nations picked their favorites. Most chose cinnamon, which is found in everything from Venetian fish dishes to British meat pies; the Vikings chose cardamon, thus defining the sweet, earthy aroma of Scandinavian pastries; Cardamon is what makes this coffee bread from Joan Mansfield Swedish; it wafts with the spice’s gentle notes, complimented by a simple butter and brown sugar interior.
One hundred percent Swedish, Joan grew up in Pigeon Cove, Rockport, Massachusetts, where a growing Swedish community cut stone in the quarry industry. Joan’s mother, as a teenager, followed relatives from Sweden to Rockport for work, and met her husband there. Mansfield still makes traditional Swedish foods, and festoons her home with gnomes at Christmas.
This sweet bread recipe is what Joan’s been making as long as she can remember; Simple but redolent, it’s a traditional treasure, probably what’s been coming out of country ovens in Sweden since the Vikings returned with the first cardamon pods.
Swedish Coffee Bread
Ingredients
2 cups lukewarm milk
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons salt
2 packages yeast
1 cup warm water to dissolve yeast
2 eggs
2 sticks butter
1 tablespoon cardamon
5 cups flour plus enough to make the dough firm enough
3/4 cup brown sugar
Glaze
1 cup confectionary sugar
4 tablespoons milk
1 tsp. vanilla
chopped walnuts
candied fruit for decoration
Instructions
Add the sugar and salt to the milk. Dissolve the yeast separately in one cup of warm water. Beat eggs and melt one stick of butter. Add these to the milk mixture along with the cardamon. Add the dissolved yeast.
Put all into a large bowl, and mix in the flour. The dough will be sticky. Put onto a board and knead the remaining flour into the dough, trying to keep it as soft as possible. Joan says the secret to a good bread is keeping the dough soft.
Let rise until double. Punch down, and allow to rise again.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Take half the mixture, knead it a bit, and then roll out into a long rectangle. Melt the remaining stick of butter, and distribute evenly over the dough. Spread with the brown sugar, and roll the dough up into a log. Bend the log into a ring. Put onto a baking sheet or in a round pan.
Take a sharp knife and cut into the ring about half-way, or a little more, going all the way around the ring.
Follow these same steps for the remaining dough.
Let the rings rise again for a 1/2 hour, and then bake at 350 degrees until golden brown, approximately 40 minutes.
Frost with confectionary sugar glaze, cherries and ground nuts.