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...