My Christmas cake is an apple-chocolate chunk-cardamom cake which is served with a cardamom powdered sugar on top.
I have 2 observations on cardamom:
1 - The flavor fades within' 2 weeks after grinding (you get pods, and there are seeds in the pods. You grind the seeds.), so I don't know how it was ever used in commercial spice mixes.
2 - You can definitely use too much, which doesn't take much. I love, love, love the taste of cardamom in baked goods like my cake, but a little over and blech! It becomes bitter and icky. How it can go from so wonderful, to so awful, I don't know, but it can. When I see people cooking with it on T.V. I sometimes wonder if they've used too much.
I've never used it in savory cooking, though I have heard a lot about it, especially from the 2 main India Indian chefs, Maneet and Aarthi (I can't spell their last names, lol, sorry!)
I also recently learned that cardamom is used in Swedish baking. I didn't know that.
Oh, and there is a way to preserve the flavor of freshly ground cardamom that I've never heard anywhere, but learned on my own. Mix it with powdered sugar, and store in a Ziploc bag. I think that the powdered sugar soaks in the volatile oils, perhaps. Whatever the mechanism, it works!
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