There is a very good Swedish pastry known as the "Cardamon Roll". It is a nice, thick, bready roll with cardamon in it and chocolate in the middle. You can also use the same dough to make cinnamon rolls.
My mother taught me how to bake these and I have the recipie written down somewhere, but circumstances conspired to teach me how to "bake" a variation on it.
My issues were that 1) my oven wasn't working and 2) I wanted something I could bake lots of at once, and then heat up in the toaster, so they'd be easy to much on whenever I was hungry, and 3) I was pretty broke and wanted this to be inexpensive.
The result was a great breakfast "pastry". It wasn't too sweet, which is good for breakfast pastries / snack food, and it has yummy chocolate and nuts inside of it.
First, you neeed this stuff:
-flour (unenriched, unbleached, if possible)
-sugar (not too much)
-salt
-baking powder
-cardamon
-milk (or water if you don't have milk)
-butter (or oil if you don't have butter)
-nuts (I use pecans, they're awesome!)
-chocolate pieces
*** a hint on chocolate pieces. The "baking" chocolate pieces the grocery store sells next to the flour and sugar and other baking things are nice but usually more expensive than similarly sized chocolate bars that the same grocery store sells in the candy asile. Chocolates with flavors (orange with hazelnuts, wow!) are to be found there as well, and are quite good.
*** I don't have a measuring cup, so just do the porportions so they look right. Taste the dough while mixing to make sure its balanced. You may need to add more sugar or cardamon.
*** ground cardamon can be expensive ($9 for a thing of it). If you want to save money, buy whole cardamons and take them out of their shells and ground them yourself. You can also ditch the cardamon altogether and substitute cinnamon and nutmeg, though the result will taste a little different.
Heat up the milk a little bit in the microwave. This makes the dough easier to work with.
In a bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Very little is necessary, and don't put in too much baking powder, as we want a horizontal, dense, pastry that will still fit into the slots on a toaster.
Pour the warm milk (or water) over it and stir it till you have a nice dough.
Put some flour onto the (clean) kitchen counter. Pour the dough onto this. Mix it up, adding more dough if necessary, until you get a nice dough consitency.
Repeat the above sets until you have as much dough as you think you need.
Chop up the chocolate into thin pieces.
Put it on a little plate with chocolate on one side and cut up nuts on the other
To cook these you can use a nice large pancake griddle, or just spread all your largest frying pans out over your stove. Get them hot and set the heat to med-low.
Grab a little bit of dough, and pick up some chocolate and nuts. Mix the chocolate and nuts into the dough. Then spread it flat on the counter. It should be about as big as the plam of your hand (give or take) and maybe 3/4" high.
Butter your pans and cook these things on them.
The baking powder will make them rise, but I mash them down with a spatula to keep them low and dense, so that they will still fit into my toaster.
YUM!
They can stay frozen for a long time. They can also be put in cookie tins and given away as presents. Just heat them up a little before you eat them. You can also take them with you on road trips or camping trips and they won't go bad too fast.
One of my favorite breakfasts is these things, some bacon, and nice warm pot of coffee.
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