- How do you feel about cinnamon buns?

- Cinnamon buns are so yesterday.

We're talking cardamom buns.

- Mmm.

The banana flavor is amazing.

Not only is this recipe gluten free, it is also vegan.

- There's no mixer or anything here.

This is a really simple bread to throw together.

- The best part is coming right now.

- See?

- Look at that!

- (laughs) - That's pretty cool.

- You are going to have fun making these.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - You know, everyone loves banana bread, so we traveled to Liberia to get a lesson from Sharon Mulbah and Yassah Cooper, who show us how to make a rice-based version with fresh ginger.

We also perfect a recipe for Swedish cardamom buns, which we think are a step up from cinnamon buns and also an orange cranberry soda bread with white chocolate chunks.

So please stay tuned.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - That meal.

You sautéed, you seared, and you served cooking with All-Clad, bonded cookware designed, engineered, and assembled in the U.S.A. for over 50 years.

All-Clad: for all your kitchen adventures.

♪ ♪ - This is Fiamah Market.

I come here like every Saturday.

Two cups of country rice.

Thank you.

I learned to make banana bread in my village.

It's a little distant from here.

♪ ♪ My mother makes this better.

While methods, they are new and better now.

(water splashing) Put it right in the water, let it soak.

Not too long.

This we can make so the bread does not stick inside, so I'm going to pour flour in there.

Just that way, it would be easy!

So I am removing the water from it, they are already soaked.

Now we're going to beat the rice.

♪ Hey, hey ♪ (pounding) Hallelujah Hosanna!

That is the theme today!

Hallelujah Hosanna.

♪ ♪ (pounding rhythmically) No sugar in it, no flour.

(singing) ♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah ♪ (singing) ♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah ♪ All right.

♪ ♪ Oh yes... (people talking in background) It's amazing!

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - Today we're going to be making Liberian banana rice bread.

We learned this recipe when we visited Monrovia.

This is a really unique recipe in that the main ingredient is actually rice, which is one of the main crops in Liberia.

And it has no flour in this recipe, and it gives it like, a really dense, moist texture similar to like a steamed pudding.

So before we get started, we're going to actually soak two cups of long grain rice in four cups of water.

I'm going to let that sit for 20 minutes.

I've already done that.

And what that does is rinses a lot of the extra starch that's on the rice, and it keeps this bread from getting too gluey.

And then I rinse the rice to get rid of any additional starch.

And so I'm just going to shake off any extra water.

And I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to process this rice in a really large 11-cup-capacity food processor.

If you don't have a food processor, you can actually skip this step.

You can substitute an equal weight of Cream of Rice cereal.

That will work well in this recipe.

And we're going to need to process this for quite a while.

It's going to take two to three minutes and even longer if your food processor blade is a little bit on the dull side.

(processor whirring) Okay, and halfway through, you want to stop it and scrape down any little bits of rice that got stuck up in the corners here.

Because you really, really want to process this rice till it's fine and powdery.

(processor whirring) Okay, so it's been about three minutes.

I'm going to feel it just to make sure it's fine enough.

And it's really nice and powdery.

This is great, this is totally ready to go.

All right, next we're going to be adding ginger.

This is about four ounces of ginger that's been peeled and thinly sliced.

This adds such a nice, bright peppery note.

It's one of my favorite parts about it.

Going to go ahead and add right into the rice.

I'm going to process that for about one minute.

(processor whirring) (processor stops) Okay.

Now I'm going to add our leaveners.

We have two teaspoons of baking powder and a half a teaspoon of baking soda.

And then three-quarters of teaspoon of table salt.

I'm just going to go ahead and mix that just briefly, about 30 seconds.

(processor whirring) Okay, that looks great.

You can see the ginger's totally broken down in there and all the other ingredients are combined.

So now we're going to add our other main ingredient.

Of course, that is about six large bananas.

And what we want is three cups total mash.

I did a nice rough mash.

And you want to make sure your bananas look like these do.

Make sure they're nice, spotty brown, and they're really, really fragrant.

So I'm going to add half of these bananas into our rice mixture, because I want to reserve the rest to add in the end to retain some of their shape.

Okay, I'm also going to add just a little bit of sugar 'cause most of the sweetness comes from the bananas themselves.

I'm just going to add three tablespoons of white sugar.

Half a cup of grapeseed oil.

And then a tablespoon of vanilla extract.

And you'll notice, I'm not actually adding any eggs to this recipe at all.

So not only is this recipe gluten-free, it is also vegan.

Okay, I'm just going to process it about 20, 30 seconds.

(processor whirring) (processor stops) I'm going to scrape down the sides, about halfway through here, just to make sure we're getting all of the rice and ginger mix incorporated.

This already smells amazing, the bananas and the ginger together.

Okay, so that's good.

(processor whirring) Okay, and now...

It's time to add the rest of those bananas.

♪ ♪ I'm just going to pulse this, like, twice.

That's it.

(processor pulses twice) Done.

Okay, now this is ready to be transferred to our cake pan-- this pan has just been sprayed with cooking spray.

So here you notice I'm using a more traditional aluminum cake pan.

I'm going to go ahead and bake this at 375 degrees.

If what you have at home is a darker, nonstick cake pan, you're going to want to reduce the oven temperature to 350, because the heat will transfer a little bit more quickly and it'll just brown a little bit too much.

You can see those nice pieces of banana in there still, but the rest is nice and smooth.

And that ground rice is going to give this cake a really interesting texture.

It's almost similar to cornmeal.

Okay, so smooth out the top a little.

So this is ready to go into our 375 degree oven.

It's going to bake for about 50 minutes.

You want the top to be nice, deeply golden brown.

And when you poke a toothpick into the center of the cake, you want a few moist crumbs attached.

Okay, so our cake is done.

I took it out of the oven, and then immediately I ran a knife around the edge.

I let it cool for ten minutes, and then I inverted it onto a cooling rack.

and then I let it cool completely.

And we're ready to eat.

I'm going to go ahead and dust this with a little mixture I have of confectioner sugar, mixed a little bit of cinnamon.

Just to add a little extra sweetness.

Just gonna dust this on top.

Oh, this looks great.

Okay, I'm going to go ahead and slice into this.

Oh, wow, this is great.

It's a beautiful, like, moist, dense crumb.

Let me go ahead and try it.

Mm.

It's really, really moist and tender, and it has a really subtle, interesting chew from the rice with a tiny bit of crunch.

The banana flavor is amazing.

It's not muddled with, like, spices or anything like that, other than the ginger, which just adds a really nice brightness and pepperiness.

And this is really, really good also the next day.

I like to have it toasted like we have here.

I like to put butter and jam on top, it's amazing.

Liberian banana rice bread.

It's really delicious.

♪ ♪ - So, Bianca, how do you feel about cinnamon buns?

- Cinnamon buns are so yesterday.

We're talking cardamom buns.

These have replaced cinnamon buns for me.

- Okay, I feel the same way.

So the cardamom bun doesn't have that icing.

- Right.

- And also cardamom makes it more interesting.

It just gives you a little bit of that little tension in there.

- Exactly.

- And it's a Swedish bun usually made around the holidays.

- All right, so let's talk about the cardamom first.

Now, the cardamom pod is what's known as green cardamom.

Also, you can get white cardamom.

The seeds, however, are black.

So you want to try and purchase whole seeds outside of the pods.

It's called decorticated cardamom seeds.

(chuckles) Say that fast three times.

Do not use ground cardamom for this, pre-ground, meaning buy it.

The texture of it is quite different, and you're not going to get the same flavor that you get when you use the whole seeds and grind them yourself.

And then we're going to start with the dough.

Now, this dough is very special.

This is one of those recipes where you want to follow the directions to the letter.

And if you follow that detail, you are going to have fun making these.

- Yeah.

- So we will start with the flour.

We have a little bit of all-purpose, and we've combined it with a little bit of bread flour, we want the extra protein to help create gluten.

So we'll get all the dry ingredients in here.

A little sugar, of course.

Okay.

We have instant yeast, dry.

Our crushed cardamom seeds.

You can use a spice grinder for this or a mortar and pestle.

You want them to maintain a little bit of texture.

So you actually see some of the seeds in here.

And we'll add a little salt, of course.

- So I have a stick of melted butter, and a cup-and-a-quarter of milk.

- And the milk is warm and the butter's just warm, not hot.

You know, yeast loves warmth.

So we want to give the yeast what the yeast wants, which will help the yeast to start multiplying.

So we've just got this at lukewarm temperature, and I'm going to turn this on low if you'll drizzle that in.

We're going to let this get blended together for now.

And the final thing, one egg yolk.

It's really for a little bit of richness.

This dough is sort of a cross between a brioche and a challah and a yeasty donut.

And it has all the best qualities of those three doughs.

- Okay.

- Okay, so this now is you can see it's a very sticky dough.

Above all, resist the urge to add more flour to it.

We're going to knead this for 20 minutes on medium-low.

During that 20 minutes, the gluten develops and it pulls the dough together.

It will happen.

- "Trust me," I've heard that before.

- But look how it's pulled away from the bowl, and how it's come together, right, with no extra flour added.

But look, it's still really soft.

Feel-- and it's warm from all that... - Hmm.

- ...from all that kneading.

Now here's a little bit of a test.

Your fingers come away clean, that's good.

So you can see that this dough is going to be handleable.

But it's still really soft.

Just want to stretch it to the point that you can see through it.

- Yeah.

- Okay, so now normally you'd put this in a bowl, let it rise until double.

This dough also needs chilling.

So we'll put it in a 9 by 13 baking dish.

Would you like to press it flat?

And do you see those little specks in it?

That's the cardamom seeds, which is so nice because we didn't grind them too finely.

So we put a little bit of oil in the baking dish just to prevent the dough from sticking.

We'll cover it with plastic.

We're going to let this rise one hour at room temperature.

Not so much that it doubles, but we're just letting the yeast start multiplying and doing its thing.

Then we'll put it in the refrigerator for two hours because we would like to work with it cold.

- Okay.

- Remember I said this would be fun?

- Well, the blob has risen.

- It has risen, look at that.

Two hours in the refrigerator and we will get started on the rolling.

You don't want too much flour added to this.

Just enough so it doesn't stick.

Okay, let's see if it poofs out like it should.

There we go, all right.

So we'll roll this out and keeping the rectangular shape until it's about 12 inches by 16.

And while I am rolling, would you get the filling?

Mix three ingredients only.

- Butter, brown sugar.

And ground cardamom seed.

- Okay, I think I'm at 16.

And then we need twelve on the width.

So we'll spread it over the entire surface of this rectangle all the way to the edges.

And the dough is cold, so that butter's going to firm up pretty quickly.

- Okay.

- All the way to the edges, please-- all right.

That's pretty darn good, all right.

So now we'll give the letter fold, which is in thirds.

Okay, good.

We'll turn it around and then roll it out again into a 12 by 16.

Okay, so to make it easy, I like to turn it over, and roll a little bit more in this direction.

Okay, so the 12 is a little less important than the 16.

You really want 16 because we're going to be cutting 16 strips out of this.

Perfection sort of dictates that we cut these ends off so we have nice flat surfaces to start with.

It also says to discard these.

- No!

- No, yeah, I'm so glad you feel the same way, all right, we'll set that aside, and then we'll cut 16 strips, let's start in the middle.

Okay, here we go.

There.

And here.

They end up about an inch wide each.

Okay.

- This is very satisfying.

- It is, isn't it?

- At least from where I stand it is, anyway.

- The best part is coming right now.

This is how we shape the buns.

So we want to stretch this out a little bit.

But if we pulled from the ends, we'd end up stretching the ends more than we are at the center.

So in order to get it evenly stretched out, pick up the ends and tap it and pull while you pull out a little bit.

There.

That's pretty cool.

- Isn't it?

- Okay, why does that work?

- It's the momentum, but, you know, with the center swinging up and down it's stretching as it goes up and down, see?

- Look at that.

- Huh!

- That's pretty cool.

She wasn't just making this up!

This actually works.

- Okay, so the next thing that happens is twisting both ends to make a spiral like cheese straws.

- Yeah.

- And now we are going to form the knot, what gives it its signature look.

All right, going to hold it in one hand like this.

- Yeah.

- Holding the long end there, you got your thumb there.

Now this is where the length determines how many times you wrap it around three fingers.

See this little end here, hold that down, wrap over it like that.

And then I have a little bit enough to wrap twice.

You might wrap once, you might wrap twice.

- Yeah.

- And then you tuck it under into the center like that.

- Yeah.

- And there's your little sort of twisted turban.

Uh oh.

- Oh, oh, oh!

(chuckles) Not bad.

You're going to be an expert by the time you finish this.

- Let's, let's just look at these two.

Now, now, she said not bad.

She's very kind, look at that.

- Your spiral just came apart a little bit.

I mean, it untwisted.

- (laughs) - All right, we're doing this again, Opposite directions.

- Got that, yeah.

- Okay.

- Beautiful.

Keep it taut.

- Yup.

- Okay, wrap it once, maybe twice.

- Yup, across again like that.

- And then tuck it under, yeah.

- And then tuck it under.

That looks pretty good.

I think I got a lot better between the first and the second one.

- (laughs) So as soon as these are on the sheet tray, preheat the oven to 400, because you want the oven very hot when these are ready to go in.

They need to proof until almost doubled, which can take anywhere from 30 to 40 minutes.

The warmer your kitchen, the faster they'll rise.

- Okay.

- These were loosely covered with plastic wrap.

As they proofed, we uncovered them, and now it's interesting about these buns because they actually rise up a little bit more than they expand because they're so tightly wrapped.

Look, you can see that the impression stays when you touch them with your finger, and that's when you know they're ready for the oven.

- And by the way, you can't tell which one are mine now.

- You can't-- see, told you.

- The power of yeast It's the great equalizer.

- So we're going to give them a little bit of an egg wash. We reserved the egg white from the yolk that went into the dough, mix it with a little bit of water, brush that on very lightly and gives it a little bit of a shine.

But it's really to help this sugar stick a little bit.

The sugar creates a wonderful golden crust on the outside of these buns.

All right, just sprinkle this over like this.

This is optional, obviously, this little finish here, but it does add a really nice touch to these.

All right, these are beautiful.

Now, one tray goes in the oven at a time, because what happens is magic in the oven.

Some of the filling actually oozes out and creates a lacy crust of cardamom sugar.

And that won't happen if you put them both in at once.

15 to 18 minutes, 400 degree oven, very hot.

That's it, that's how fast.

- That's all?

Yeah.

- Hm.

What do you think?

- I would say, yeah, absolutely.

I don't know why we have little plates, but.

- Well, you don't have to use a little plate.

I do want to show you this lacy edge is a point of pride when they do competitions with these buns in Sweden.

You don't want to plate, but I'm going to put it there so you can pick it up.

- Okay.

Okay.

- Okay.

These are fully cooled.

You can eat them warm, you don't want to eat them hot.

Just resist the urge, let them cool down a little bit.

So have at it.

- Ooh!

Mm.

- Right?

That little pull and the chew.

- Oh.

There are few things in life that exceed expectations.

And then when you take a bite, your senses just implode.

You just can't even talk.

- I mean, they look beautiful and they taste out of this world.

- So cardamom buns, which is, I guess, the Swedish answer to the cinnamon bun, it's pull apart, but it's not so full of sugar.

You know, it's halfway between the dinner roll texture and then a cinnamon bun.

- Yeah.

- Nice job, these are good.

- Thank you.

♪ ♪ So orange cranberry soda bread with white chocolate chunks is certainly not your grandmother's soda bread.

We adapted this recipe from the Luminary Bakery, which is in London.

It's a social enterprise for women from underserved communities where they learn to bake and they work at the bakery.

This particular recipe was created by Anya.

She was the head baker at the time, and it was developed around the holidays.

So this soda bread is decidedly more festive than the original.

We're going to start with the orange.

I'm going to zest one tablespoon of zest into one-and-three-quarters cups of buttermilk.

You want to capture all of the oil that's on the zest.

If I were to measure this and then put it in, I'd have to transfer it a couple of times and I'd lose all of that oil.

So just eyeball it.

I generally think one orange is about a tablespoon.

That looks about good.

I'm going to whisk these together, and that orange zest is really going to infuse the buttermilk with a lot of that flavor.

Okay, now we need a little bit of juice as well, Because what we're going to do is we're going to take these cranberries.

This is a cup-and-a-half of dried cranberries that I've chopped up.

And if you bake with dried fruit, oftentimes, after it's baked, it gets kind of hard.

The best way to avoid that is to plump the fruit with some liquid.

So we're going to use two tablespoons of orange juice.

I'm just going to eyeball it.

That looks good.

Stir that up a little bit.

So in order to plump these, they need to be hot.

So I'm going to pop this in the microwave for about a minute.

Stir it about halfway through.

All right, so these cranberries are nice and plump.

I'm going to let those sit just until they're cooled to room temperature.

In the meantime, we can work on the white chocolate.

So this is four ounces.

I'm going to chop this up, but I'm going to chop it into kind of big pieces about a half-an-inch or so.

If you chop it any smaller than that, those pieces are going to kind of melt into the bread, and you're not going to even notice them.

What we really want here are these little pockets of white chocolate.

Adds so much creaminess to the bread, it's really, really nice.

Okay, we can move on to the dry ingredients.

So in the bowl, I've got two-and-a-half cups of all-purpose flour.

I'm going to add three-quarters of a cup of whole wheat flour to that and then a teaspoon of baking soda.

That's our leavener here.

And a teaspoon of table salt.

Now we can add in the chocolate.

And you've probably noticed there's no mixer or anything here, this is a really simple, easy bread to throw together.

The cranberries.

Just going to toss this with my hands.

And then make a little well in the center.

And that's where we're going to pour that buttermilk that we infused with orange.

Now, buttermilk is obviously very flavorful.

It's tangy.

But what it's doing here is softening the bread.

So buttermilk has lactic acid, which helps break down gluten.

So that'll keep this bread really nice and moist.

Now, unlike a yeast bread, you don't want to knead this or really handle it too much.

This is more like a scone or a biscuit.

You want to be pretty delicate with it, which is why I'm kind of just folding this in.

So now that there is sort of a shaggy dough here, I'm going to put it out on the board.

It's okay if it's not completely mixed at this point.

And then I'm going to use a bench draper just to kind of fold it over itself to really get it into a cohesive dough.

So this is pretty sticky, as you can see, that's okay.

All that is going to mean is really moist bread.

Now I'm going to transfer it onto this prepared baking sheet.

It's lined with a little bit of parchment.

All right, now I'm going to sprinkle it with some flour on the top, and then we're going to cut an X on the top of the bread.

You want to go down about three-quarters of an inch or so, and this is to let the steam out.

That's going to help the bread cook really well.

So I'm going to put this in a 400 degree oven.

It's going to take about 40 minutes or so to bake.

You want to tap it on the bottom, if it sounds hollow, that means the bread is done.

♪ ♪ All right, so I took this out of the oven.

It's been cooling for about an hour.

It's still a little warm, which is perfect.

And you can see how really nice and crusty the outside is.

And those little pieces of white chocolate have caramelized on the outside.

So I'm very excited about those parts.

Just gonna slice it in half first, and then I'm going to cut some pieces off this way.

Oh, this smells so good.

But you can actually see how moist the bread looks when I press on it, you can kind of feel the moistness, which is amazing since there's no fat in here other than from the buttermilk and the chocolate.

So this is packed with cranberries.

Because this is a lean bread, traditionally, these little pockets of white chocolate are so creamy, that you forget that there's no butter or eggs in this.

So orange cranberry soda bread with white chocolate chunks, definitely festive enough for your holiday table, but it comes together so easily, you could just do it every day.

You can get this recipe and all of the recipes from this season of Milk Street at MilkStreetTv.com.

- All episodes and recipes from this season of Milk Street Television are available for free at our website, MilkStreetTV.com.

Please access our content, including our step-by-step recipe videos, from your smartphone, your tablet, or your computer.

- The new Milk Street Cookbook is now available and includes every recipe from our TV show.

From fried shrimp tacos and Thai-style vegetable stir-fry to Mexican chicken soup and Swedish cardamom buns, the Milk Street Cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes.

Order your copy of the Milk Street Cookbook for $27, 40% less than the cover price, and receive a Milk Street tote with your order at no additional charge.

Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - That meal.

You sautéed, you seared, and you served, cooking with All-Clad, bonded cookware designed, engineered, and assembled in the U.S.A. for over 50 years.

All-Clad: for all your kitchen adventures.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪