We tried to recreate Sweden's famous cardamom buns at home

• Fabrique, one of Sweden's most popular bakeries, is known for its cardamom buns.
• Insider's Lisa Paradise tried to recreate them at home with no recipe, only a few tips and tricks from the chef.

The following is a transcript of the video.

Lisa: Can you make one of Sweden's most famous desserts at home? Well, today, I'm gonna try.

I'm calling one of the head chefs of Fabrique, a café which has become a household name in Sweden. And they only have one outpost in all of New York City.

They're known for this, a cardamom bun. Which is a spicy, sweet dessert that's full of, you might've guessed it, cardamom.

Outside of Fabrique, cardamom just isn't a super-popular baking ingredient here in the States.

I'm gonna jump on the phone with Chef Oscar, who's sending me one key ingredient to get me started and hopefully a couple tricks to help me along the way.

Oscar Erlandsson: In the bag, you have six cardamom buns for you to study and taste. And also I gave you cardamom for you to use when you bake.

Lisa: Oh, yeah.

Oscar: It's already grounded, so you can test it out.

Lisa: Oh, it smells so good, too. Oscar: Yeah, I know. It's almost like a floral, savory.

Lisa: Sweet and spicy.

Oscar: Yeah.

Lisa: And like a snickerdoodle, almost.

Oscar: Cardamom is a very potent spice, you know? You can't get the cardamom that we want in the US easily, but you use it more in only cooking. I mean, stews and other things. It's not a common thing to use it in baking here.

Lisa: This is really buttery, rich feel and flavor to it.

Oscar: We use a lot of butter in our filling. Gives it more flavor and moist, you know.

Lisa: How much butter is in this? [Oscar laughs] That hesitation was all I needed.

Oscar: We use just the right amount. I've done once or twice with too much butter. You don't want that because then the buns also lose their shape.

Lisa: If I was gonna mess up one thing when making it at home, what would it be?

Oscar: Don't be afraid of using more liquid to the dough. You don't want a stiff dough. You want it to feel relaxed after kneading it.

What type of flour you gonna use?

Lisa: I have all different kinds of flour because I've been baking bread, just like every other person stuck at home.

Oscar: Go for the all-purpose, maybe, unbleached. I don't want anything added to the flour. That's the whole philosophy of Fabrique, also. You want clean products.

Lisa: As far as tools that you guys have at the bakery, what's one thing that I definitely don't have in my kitchen?

Oscar: You don't have a proofer, but just keep the windows closed and maybe put the oven on. It will help you out a lot.

Lisa: If I don't nail the shape, was it all a wash?

Oscar: If you take the dough, twisting around two or three laps, that's just a shape, you know? In Sweden, you see a lot of different. It's all about the taste when you're baking at home.

Lisa: First thing I'm gonna do, cream the butter and the sugar together. [mixer whirring] Butter and sugar done.

It is time for the dry ingredients. A whole lotta flour, just a little bit of salt, yeast in this little spoon. No, I'm not an influencer. Don't do that. [shaking]

I'm adding the butter and the sugar into the mixer. I'm gonna add about a third of the flour mixture to it and let that start mixing.

We've gone from not being afraid of overhydrating the dough to pretty afraid that we've overhydrated the dough very, very quickly. It wouldn't hold its shape if I tried to do anything with it. I'm not gonna panic. [people screaming]

I'm gonna add the cardamom. And then if it's still too wet, then I will panic.

Finish dough, done. I don't think that this consistency is right, but I think that it works. Wow, this dough is smooth. Like, that rolls out really easily. I thought this was gonna take so long; it's almost done. [laughs] I'm so happy.

My instinct tells me that this dough needs to be thinner, but I have run out of counter space. I'm not gonna measure this. I'm just gonna do a couple pats of butter.

I just used, like, half a stick of butter on this, and it doesn't seem to be nearly enough.

I'm just sprinkling a lot of some sugar mixed with a very little bit of salt over it. And then I'll go back over it with the cardamom. I probably could have saved myself some time by mixing these together, but I didn't do that.

[dough flops] Yes! I don't wanna get ahead of myself, but I feel good about this.

Just to make sure that everything is cohesive and symmetrical, I'm gonna use a palette knife as a guide. And then, yeah, cut them into little strips that I can hopefully shape into buns.

[climactic music] [buzzer] Nope, that's not it. [buzzer] OK. That's not it. [buzzer] Are my strips too thin? [buzzer] Oh, oh. Oh, OK.

So, the first couple that I've been trying to fold, I've just been wrapping them around my fingers and then trying to shove it. I have forgotten that you're supposed to go over the front of it. I don't know if I rolled my dough thin-slash-long enough to get to that step.

So, this is a really long strip. So let's try it this way. Hands in the special position, right? And then you wrap it once, twice, and then I think you go over and in. Yeah. [cheering] F--- yes. It's ugly, but we got one.

So, let's do that again, but let's do it better. Around two fingers. Over and in, right, right, right, right, right. We're getting a lot of questionable shapes, but we're getting closer.

Final step before I bake these is I'm just gonna let them proof for probably about an hour. I've already turned my oven on, so I'm gonna stick them right above the oven. That way, like Oscar recommended, they get a really nice, hot proof.

And then I'm going to bake them and see where we're at.

The first round is finally out of the oven.

Right off the bat, you can tell the difference between Fabrique's and mine. Mine are obviously much, much smaller. I don't know if they're smaller because I didn't roll the dough out thick enough or if because mine didn't puff up like his does.

I fully ran out of counter space when I was trying to roll these out, so I think that if I had rolled these a little bit longer and then maybe cut them a little bit thicker, they wouldn't be quite as small and tiny and sad in comparison.

I'm kind of proud of the shape. Mine also don't have that golden-brown exterior to them.

And I think that that's because I ran out of butter when I was trying to make these. And so I didn't have enough to coat the tops of them with, so they're not gonna get that super-crispy golden brown top.

They're still really buttery and cardamom-y and spicy and delicious.