time to bake a semla

Time for the promised semla recipe. The semla bun, which is a moist cardamom wheat bun, to be filled with whipped (soy) cream and the (homemade) almond paste.

This recipe makes 18 small semla buns

25 g fresh yeast
3 dl oats, almond or soy milk
1 dl caster sugar
2 tbsp freshly ground cardamom
150 g butter (ideally I would like to use dairy free butter, but since that's not available palmoil-free in Sweden I use liquid butter/oil instead, EDIT 2017: there's now at least one dairyfree liquid butter/oil available in Sweden so it's now easy to make these buns completely plantbased if you skip the egg brushing of course)
9-10 dl wheat flour
(1 organic, free range egg for brushing)

1. Crumble the yeat into your food processor bowl. Warm the milk to 37 degrees C and pour a small amount of it over the yeast. Stir until dissolved. Then pour the rest of the milk in.

2. Add sugar, fresh cardamom and butter. Then add the flour little by little while the machine works until you have a good, firm dough. It takes about five minutes. Let the dough rise under a towel for 1 hour.

3. Pour the dough onto a floured work table. Cut it into 18 pieces. Shape the pieces into round buns with your hands. Put them on a baking sheet lined with oven paper. Let them rise for 30 minutes.

4. Set the oven on 225 degrees C. If you don't want to brush the buns with the whisked egg you can skip that part, it's not essential. Bake the buns in the middle of the oven for about 10 minutes until golden. Let them cool on a rack.



How to assemble the buns into a semla (sing.), semlor (plur.)

1. Make your own almond paste, because it's so simple and so worth it!

2. Whip the soy cream until very firm.

3. Cut the lid of the buns. Put a generous dollop of the almond paste on the bottom buns and then an even more generous amount of whipped cream on top of that (you can pipe it for a more aesthetic look). Then put the bun lid on top. Sprinkle with icing sugar for the final touch of a proper Swedish semla.

Now stuff you face full of this Swedish lenten delight!


Heavenly almond paste