Swedish shrove tuesday pastries

The 8th of March this year was the date of Shrove tuesday. More known as pancake tuesday this is the day people indulge in pancakes. For me it was once again a day of making pancakes all day long in work since people, religious or not, really do want their pancakes on this very day. So working in a restaurant or cafe this day can be pretty busy.
In Sweden however this day is called "fat tuesday", but we dont eat pancakes. We eat a pastry called "Semla" or "Fastlagsbulle" (lent/fast-bun). A cardamom flavoured bun filled with almond paste and whipped cream, dusted with icing sugar. It is a real treat and should traditionally only be sold and eaten on this very day, nowadays most cafes and bakeries sell the pastries for weeks before the actual day to eat them though.

Buns

50 grams fresh yeast/ 14 grams dried yeast
500ml milk
150grams butter
85 grams caster sugar
1tsp salt
900 grams plain flour
1tsp cardamom, ground
1 egg+egg yolk for brushing the buns

Melt butter in a pan and add milk, let it be luke warm. Add the butter and milk to the yeast in a large bowl and mix until the yeast has dissolved. Add egg, sugar, salt and cardamom. Add 2/3 of the flour, mix into a paste. Gradually add more flour while working the paste into a dough, you might not need all flour, the dough is good when it is elastic and easy to work. Let prove under a cloth until it has doubled in size.

Divide into 20 pieces and shape little round balls. Let prove under a cloth on a baking tray lined with baking paper for 30-40min. Brush with a lighlt beaten egg yolk and bake for 8-10min on 220C. Let cool down.

Almond paste

100 grams ground almonds
100 grams caster sugar
water

Combine almond and sugar and and add just enough water to bind it togehter to a firm paste.

Cut the top of the buns and put a small bit of almond paste on each bun. Whisk 300ml of cream, not too firm but firm enough to pipe on top of the almond paste. Place the lid of the buns on top of the cream. Dust with icing sugar and serve.

If you have some unfilled buns left you can cut them into quarters and dry out on a low heat in to oven for a couple of hours and you have lovely, crisp cardamom biscotti.

Blueberry buns

Here is another recipe for those who are not tired of them yet. I am definitely not tired of buns and would gladly have one a day if my tummy did not tell me not too. So maybe it is not the healthiest treat but what can one say when a tray of freshly baked buns comes out of the oven and smell delicious? This time I filled them with blueberry jam instead of a butter filling and it was so nice. It is more Finnish than Swedish to bake blueberry buns but that does not bother me at and in fact I think that anyone, just like me, loves blueberries should bake these. The recipe is the same as the cardamon or cinnamon buns that I have blogged about before so i will send to to that page if you click here. The only thing you have to change is to skip the filling in the recipe and use jam instead.

Raspberry scones

As a tradition I try to bake scones one morning every weekend, last week it happened to be on the saturday and what a great start of a great day it was. Usually I make a little bit healthier and more wholesome scones at home but this morning I was interested in the taste more so than the nutrition and therefore used my sweet scone recipe and flavoured them with raspberries.
The recipe will make 5 large scones or 8 small.

50 grams butter, room temperature
235 grams plain flour
17 grams baking powder
25 grams caster sugar
1 egg yolk
100ml milk (or half milk/half cream, or yoghurt)

16 raspberries, I used frozen

Mix all dry ingredients in a bowl, rub the butter into the flour mix. Add milk and egg yolk and quickly bring together to a dough. On a floured surface roll out the dough to about 3cm thick, put half of the raspberries on one half of the dough, fold over and put the remaining raspberries on one half of the dough, fold over again and gently roll again to about 5cm thick. Take out scones with a cookie cutter or glass. Place on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Brush with milk or egg. Bake for 15min on 200C.

Cinnamon buns

The 4th of october is the cinnamon buns day in Sweden but they are baked and eaten all year around. I made some last week to put in the freezer. It is so handy to defrost a few buns if someone pops over for tea or if I decide to go for a picnic. Baked goods are always tastier when fresh but if you freeze the buns as soon as they have cooled down they will taste perfectly fine when defrosted.

Dough
50 grams fresh yeast/ 14 grams dried yeast
500ml milk
150grams butter
85 grams caster sugar
1tsp salt
900 grams plain flour
1tsp cardamom, ground

Filling
100grams butter, room temperature
80grams caster sugar
2tbsp cinnamon, ground

1 egg
pearl sugar or flaked almonds

Melt butter in a pan and add milk, let it be luke warm. Add the butter and milk to the yeast in a large bowl and mix until the yeast has dissolved. Add sugar, salt and cardamom. Add 2/3 of the flour, mix into a paste. Gradually add more flour while working the paste into a dough, you might not need all flour, the dough is good when it is elastic and easy to work. Let prove under a cloth until it has doubled in size.

Gently knead the dough on a floured surface. Divide into 2 pieces. Roll out to big squares about 2cm thick. Spread the butter evenly over the dough, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. You can either roll together like a swiss roll and cut into little swirls, or fold once and cut into strips that you twist around little swirly braids. Let rise for about 30min on a baking tray on baking paper or in muffins paper cups.

Brush with beaten egg, sprinkle with pearl sugar or flaked almonds and bake for 8-10min on 220C.

Buns

If you go to Sweden you will soon realise that we have a great variety of baked goods, and that there is a bakery in almost every corner. A lot of our traditional pastries and cakes are very similar to French, Italian, German and English pastries, but there is a few things that we Swedes proudly brag about being so very Swedish and original, and buns are certainly one of them. What might surprise many people is the generous amount of spices used to flavour these pastries. The use of spices such as cardamom and cinnamon goes back to the 1600's when the export of spices increased and therefor made it possible for the less fortunate people get their hands on them. It used to be only the royalty who could afford such treats as spices of this kind.

The bun itself has been made since around 1950, when ingredients like butter, white flour and sugar became cheaper and the Swedish people became richer. The traditional bun is a sort of brioche-like dough flavoured with cinnamon, butter and sugar, rolled out to the classical swirl shape. The bun is for us Swedes what a croissant is for the French; an essential part of our food culture. There is even a day for the cinnamon bun, the 4th of October, and that very day will be honoured with bun baking here in my cottage in Dublin.

Today there is endless variations and one of my personal favourites is the cardamom bun, mainly because I love cardamom but also because instead of the pearl sugar, usually used for decoration, this kind of bun is brushed with melted butter after baked and then dipped in caster sugar.

Dough

50 grams fresh yeast
500ml milk
150grams butter
85 grams caster sugar
1tsp salt
900 grams plain flour
1tsp cardamom, ground

Filling

100grams butter, room temperature
80grams caster sugar
2tbsp cardamom, ground

Decoration

1 egg
25 grams butter
caster sugar

Melt butter in a pan and add milk, let it be luke warm. Add the butter and milk to the yeast in a large bowl and mix until the yeast has dissolved. Add sugar, salt and cardamom. Add 2/3 of the flour, mix into a paste. Gradually add more flour while working the paste into a dough, you might not need all flour, the dough is good when it is elastic and easy to work. Let prove under a cloth until it has doubled in size.

Gently knead the dough on a floured surface. Divide into 2 pieces. Roll out to big squares about 2cm thick. Spread the butter evenly over the dough, sprinkle with sugar and cardamom. You can either roll together like a swiss roll and cut into little swirls, or fold once and cut into strips that you twist around little swirly braids. Let rise for about 30min on a baking tray on baking paper or in muffins paper cups.

Brush with beaten egg and bake for 8-10min on 220C.

When cooled down brush with melted butter and dip in caster sugar.