Swedish Semla Recipe
by Kristin Lohse
-
Easy
This Swedish Shrove Tuesday recipe (move over pancakes) is fragrant with cardamom and vanilla, rich and nutty with toasted almond paste, and so SO decadent with their cream topping.
For the buns:
- 1 egg + 1 for brushing
- 65g sugar
- 250ml whole milk + some for brushing
- 13g dry yeast
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp cardamom seeds
- 420-450g strong white flour
-
75g room temp salted butter
For the Almond paste
- 100g almonds
- 100g icing sugar
- 1 egg white
-
splash of whipping cream
To finish
- 600ml whipping cream
- 1/2 tsp vanilla powder
How To Make Swedish Semlor
- Whip egg and sugar until white and fluffy. Crush your cardamom seeds in spice blender or mortar & pestle.
- Mix the yeast & cardamom into the flour. Put the milk into the mixer, with the egg and sugar mix. Combine the flour & salt into liquid, work to smooth dough(use as little flour as you can get away with).
- Add room temp butter and incorporate. Let it prove until doubled.
- Turn on oven to 225C. Form balls from the dough (~60g each), and let prove again.
- Brush with eggs, turn oven down to 200 & bake for 10-15min. Cool fully, then cut lids at a triangle and take out some filling.
- For the almond paste: roast almonds in oven at 200C for about 10min. Leave to cool a little. Blitz almonds until fine in food processor blitz with icing sugar in food processor.
- Blitz with egg white in food processor add bread from the removed bun innards and some whipping cream until desired consistency.
- Whip cream with vanilla powder until piping consistency. Fill buns with almond paste (I recommend filling just before serving). Pipe cream on top. Put lid on and dust with icing sugar.
About the author
Kristin is the Purchasing and Buying assistant at Sous Chef. She has several chefs and excellent home cooks in her family, and grew up in the kitchen in Sweden. Cooking and baking with her mum happened pretty much every day. Cinnamon rolls were always stocked up in the freezer, and if they were running low, more baking had to be done. Kristin always loves learning more about food and ingredients to continue improving her skills.
