Day 202: Fettisdagen

Today is Fettisdagen, Fat Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday. In England I would be looking forward to the pancakes but now I'm in a country with something even better!

SEMLOR

In fact I just finished eating one right now, with a cup of tea. Semlor are Swedish cream buns, traditionally eaten around Lent, flavoured with cardamom and marzipan and rainbows and unicorns.

Here is a recipe for making your own, unless you have the good fortune to be reading this in Sweden around Lent, in which case buy some NOW.

Ingredients
For the Buns
100g butter
300ml milk
50g fresh or 2 tbsp dry active yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 Egg
1½ teaspoons baking powder
100ml sugar (Swedish people are strange and measure dry ingredients in liquid units. Use a measuring jug, otherwise its a third of a cup (American people are strange and measure everything in a cup))
1000ml or 1L plain flour /all purpose flour /vetemjöl /farine de blé (there, now everyone's happy)
10 crushed cardamom pods (take the pod bit out, just crush the inside seeds)

For the filling
125g ground almonds - I ground mine in a coffee grinder and kept the skins on
Crumbs from inside the buns
100ml milk
100ml sugar
whipped cream
icing sugar

Instructions

1. Melt the butter and add the milk. If you are using active yeast, heat this mixture to 37ºC. If you are using dry yeast, heat this mixture to 45ºC. Add the milk/butter to a bowl containing yeast, salt, sugar and egg. Mix the flour and baking powder and add this to the mix. Cover the dough and let it rise for 30mins
2. Knead the dough until it's elastic, then separate it into 12 round balls. Put these on greased baking trays and leave them for another 30 mins until they double in size. Brush them with egg (or rub them like me if you don't have a poncy brush) and put them in the oven for 8 mins at fucking gas mark 9 / 250ºC. I say "fucking" because that's fucking hot.
3. Let them cool then slice off a little cap from the bun and keep it to one side. Scoop out a bit of the middle of each one and put the middles in a bowl. Add ground almonds, sugar and milk then mix it all up and shove a bit in the centre of each bun. Top this with whipped cream (pipe it on like me if you have a poncy piping bag). Put the top of the bun on the cream and dust with sugar
4. mmmm...