Fatties' Day

Fettisdagen is the Swedish for Shrove Tuesday, Fat Day in literal translation. They don't do pancakes.

They do better than pancakes.

Let me say that again, as I wouldn't lightly deploy that sentence. They. Do. Better. Than. Pancakes. Pancakes are a Swedish staple, in fact. Traditionally you have them on a Thursday, along with a bowl of thick yellow pea and ham soup, and delicious they are too.

But they pale in comparison to the Semla.

Semla are how you start your Lent off over here. They've been selling them in the shops for over a month, rather in the same vein as the way that Creme Eggs turn up in the shops round about last November these days. Apparently Sweden gets through 50 million Semlor a year. That means about 5 per capita. I know for a fact many Swedes don't eat them, so somebody must be knocking the numbers up somehow. Quite how, I couldn't say. I certainly don't know anyone who's eating them all the time, whenever he gets a chance.

One of their kings died of a surfeit of semlor, apparently. Smart fella, I like the cut of his gib.

Semlor are cardamon buns scopped hollow, filled up with almond paste and whipped cream, then dusted with icing sugar. Sometimes they're called a hetvägg, a hot wall, because you serve them in a bowl of hot milk. That doesn't appeal to me, I can't think that turning it into a platchy mess of warm dough would improve on the lush crispness of the original.

They are nothing to do with babies, but they are to do with me adjusting to life in Sweden, hence a blog post about them. There's no amount of culture shock you can't get round with enough whipped cream, apparently.

We're a multicultural family, of course, so we're also having pancakes tonight. Life is good.