Swedish Cardamom Buns

Well I have just taken a batch of these out of the oven and the smell is heavenly!  I made them for the first time absolutely ages ago, and keep forgetting to revisit them.  Didn't have time last weekend, so today was the day.

My liquid starter (130% hydration) hasn't been fed for a while and after feeding it Friday night, it still smelt odd yesterday, so I gave it another refresh yesterday.  It wasn't as bubbly as normal this morning, it smelt a lot better and was starting to produce a nice foam on top, so I thought it was ready for an outing.

The recipe for these buns can be found on The Sourdough Companion website so I won't bother regurgitating it here.  But I will give your taste buds something to think about by posting some pictures of the makings from today.  If I could somehow attach the wonderful smell that is currently filling my house I would, but sadly we are a ways from scratch and sniff pc's :(

Here is the dough after rolling, filling, folding and cutting to strips, then tied in knots:

I made 1.5 x the recipe so baked them on 2 trays.  Here is one tray fresh out of the over:

I managed to let them cool down slightly before trying one, and OMG it was so light and scrumptious.  The cardamom flavour was fabulous.  They were D E L I C I O U S!!  I started thinking, you could make these every weekend, but NO becuase you'd end up the size of a house!!

So I wisely rang a couple of friends, packed buns into bags and did some neighbourhood deliveries just to get them out of my house - I swear if I'd stayed for too long with the fabulous smell of them, I wouldn't have been able to stop at eating just one!  So now some friends and their kids have a lovely sweet something for morning tea tomorrow, and I keep from turning into the Michelin woman :)

PS.  These are also absolutely wonderful made with cinnamon instead of cardamom!