Cardamom cinnamon rolls with cream cheese frosting in a baking pan, one roll pulled apart to show the spiral

Cardamom Cinnamon Rolls with Cream Cheese Frosting

Jump to Recipe

These cardamom cinnamon rolls are the everyday version of a Scandinavian bakery classic — a soft, cardamom-scented dough rolled with brown sugar and cinnamon, then finished with a velvety cream cheese frosting. The dough gets a long, patient knead, and that’s the whole secret to the crumb. Here’s how we make them.

Cardamom cinnamon rolls with cream cheese frosting in a baking pan, one roll pulled apart to show the spiral

Cardamom Cinnamon Rolls with Cream Cheese Frosting

Soft cardamom cinnamon rolls with a velvety cream cheese frosting — a Nordic bakery classic made at home.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 35 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Proofing 1 hour 40 minutes
Total Time 2 hours 30 minutes
Servings: 12 rolls
Course: Breakfast, Dessert, Snack
Cuisine: Norwegian, Scandinavian
Ingredients Equipment Method Notes

Ingredients
  

Dough
  • 450 g all-purpose flour 3¾ cups
  • 50 g granulated sugar ¼ cup
  • 25 g fresh yeast or 8 g (2½ tsp) instant yeast
  • 5 g fine sea salt 1 tsp
  • 6 g ground cardamom 1 level tbsp
  • 3 g ground cinnamon 1 tsp
  • 200 ml whole milk ¾ cup + 1 tbsp
  • 75 g butter ⅓ cup, room temperature, cubed
  • 1 egg for the dough
Cinnamon filling
  • 100 g butter 7 tbsp, room temperature
  • 125 g light brown sugar ½ cup + 1 tbsp, packed
  • 15 g ground cinnamon 2 tbsp
  • 1 pinch fine sea salt
Cream cheese frosting
  • 150 g full-fat cream cheese ⅔ cup, cold
  • 50 g unsalted butter 3½ tbsp, room temperature
  • 100 g powdered sugar ¾ cup + 2 tbsp
  • 1 tsp vanilla sugar or ½ tsp vanilla extract
  • 1½ tsp lemon juice
To finish
  • 1 large egg beaten, for brushing

Equipment

  • Stand mixer with dough hook This dough gets a long, slow knead — 25 minutes total. Ours is a KitchenAid Artisan, and this is exactly what it's for.
  • Digital kitchen scale We bake enriched doughs by weight — the butter and flour ratio is what makes the crumb.
  • 9×13-inch baking pan (23 x 33 cm) Baking the rolls close together keeps them soft on the sides — twelve rolls fit three across and four down. Ours is exactly this size.
  • Immersion blender Our trick for the frosting: it emulsifies cold cream cheese and soft butter into something genuinely velvety, with no lumps.
  • Bench scraper Cuts the log into clean rolls without dragging the dough.

Method
 

Cinnamon filling
  1. Make the filling. Stir the room-temperature butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and salt into a smooth paste. Set aside at room temperature — it needs to stay spreadable.
Dough
  1. Combine the dry ingredients. Add the flour, sugar, yeast, salt, cardamom and cinnamon to the bowl of a stand mixer and whisk briefly to combine
  2. Warm the milk and egg. Whisk the milk and the dough egg together and warm to 77–86°F (25–30°C) — just under lukewarm. Keep it cool: 25 minutes of mixing will warm this dough considerably on its own.
  3. First knead. Pour the milk mixture into the dry ingredients and knead on low speed for about 10 minutes, until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl.
  4. Add the butter. Add the cubed butter a few pieces at a time. Once it's all in, knead on medium speed for about 15 minutes, taking it up to high for the last 5. The dough should be smooth, glossy and elastic enough to stretch thin without tearing.
  5. Rise. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.
Shape and bake
  1. Roll out. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured counter and roll it into a rectangle roughly 14 × 18 inches (35 × 45 cm), with the long side facing you.
  2. Fill and roll up. Spread the cinnamon filling all the way to the edges. Roll up from the long side into a tight log, about 18 inches (45 cm) long. Cut into 12 rolls, each about 1½ inches (3.7 cm) thick.
  3. Proof in the pan. Place cut side up in a 9×13-inch pan, three across and four down. Cover with plastic wrap and proof for 30–40 minutes, until visibly puffed and touching.
  4. Bake. Brush with the beaten egg and bake at 350°F (180°C) for about 15 minutes, until golden. The center of the middle roll should read around 190°F (88°C)
  5. Cool. Let the rolls cool completely before frosting — warm rolls will melt the frosting straight through.
Cream cheese frosting
  1. Blend. Put the cold cream cheese, soft butter, powdered sugar, vanilla and lemon juice in a bowl. Blend with an immersion blender until completely smooth and velvety.
  2. Frost. Spread a generous layer over the cooled rolls.

Notes

Chef’s tip — knead first, butter second. Ten minutes of kneading before the butter goes in lets the gluten build on its own; add it too early and the fat coats the flour and you fight the dough for the next half hour. More on why in the post below.
  • On the cardamom: a full level tablespoon sounds like a lot. It isn’t — this is a cardamom dough with cinnamon in it, which is how these are made in Scandinavia. Buy it whole and grind it yourself if you can; pre-ground cardamom loses its perfume fast.
  • Butter: salted butter works fine here — there’s salt in the dough anyway.
  • Storage: best the day they’re baked. Unfrosted rolls freeze well; thaw, warm briefly and frost.

Why the dough is kneaded for 25 minutes

Enriched doughs like this one need more gluten development than lean bread dough, because the butter, sugar and egg all interfere with the structure. We knead for ten minutes before the butter goes in — building the gluten while the dough is still relatively lean — then another fifteen once the butter is worked through. It looks like a long time on paper. What you get is a dough that stretches thin without tearing, and rolls that pull apart in soft sheets instead of breaking.

Keep the milk cool going in — just under lukewarm, around 80°F. A stand mixer running for 25 minutes generates real heat, and a dough that comes out too warm will over-proof before you’ve finished shaping.

Tips for Cardamom Cinnamon Rolls: Getting the Spiral Right

Roll the dough into an even rectangle and spread the filling all the way to the edges — the corners are where people go thin, and thin corners mean rolls with a dry outer turn. Roll it tight. A loose log gives you rolls that unravel and bake flat.

Cut with a bench scraper or a sharp knife in one clean press. Sawing drags the dough and smears the filling.

The frosting

Cold cream cheese, soft butter, and an immersion blender. Cold cream cheese with soft butter is the combination that emulsifies rather than splits, and the immersion blender takes it somewhere a whisk won’t — properly velvety, no lumps of sugar. The lemon juice isn’t for lemon flavor; it’s there to cut the sweetness so you can eat two.

Wait until the rolls are completely cool. Frosting warm rolls is how you end up with sugar soup in the bottom of the pan.

Make it your own

Swap half the cinnamon in the filling for cardamom for a full-on cardamom bun — or go all the way with the cardamom knots variation in our cinnamon knots. A handful of chopped almonds or a scattering of pearl sugar over the egg wash gives you a crunchier top. If cream cheese frosting isn’t your thing, a hot sugar syrup brushed on straight from the oven gives a simpler, glossy Norwegian-style finish.

More Nordic bakes you’ll love

You might also like