For those of you already in Sweden, you may have noticed a delicious baked good in bakeries and stores everywhere.  The semla.  Essentially, the semla, or semlor (if you’re really hungry and want more than one) is a wheat bun hollowed out and filled with amazingness.  The amazingness consists of an almond paste and plenty of cream. To top it all off, well, is the top of the wheat bun that you just hollowed out. Add a little powdered sugar and you have yourself a delicious treat.  If you’re feeling adventurous, put your semla in a bowl of warm milk.  Really, there’s no wrong way to enjoy a semla.

This delicious treat is time specific though.  Meant to be eaten on Fat Tuesday (or fettisdagen in Swedish), the semla makes its appearance around the turn of the year and sticks around until about Easter.  And Sweden eats them by the millions.  Seriously.  A few years ago, a newspaper article from Aftonbladet looked into the number of semlor eaten per year.  That number was staggering.  About 40 million.  With a country of nine million people, that’s an average of five per person.  I always did my part.

Fat Tuesday is March 8th this year so be sure to find yourself a semla.  If you can’t be in Sweden to find a semla, try baking your own this weekend. VisitSweden.com has a great semla recipe here.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any secret family recipe to share with you all. I struggle even to make Swedish pancakes from a pre-made mix.

Good luck, and if you succeed with your baking experiment, let us know how it went. Pictures on our Facebook page of your semlor are always appreciated!