The weekend bake, lussekatter, revisiting our own a recipe from 2012 at Styrsö Sweden, 2022
Text & Photo © CM Cordeiro & JE Nilsson 2022
I saw the boundaries of festive periods, often indicated by the appearance of certain foods, dissolve when I recently walked into a grocery shop along the Swedish west coast, and found a luscious twin pack of semlor (a specific February treat), in mid-November. The appearance of a Shrove Tuesday food appearing just past All Saints took us by surprise, and it took us all of two seconds to grab that purchase. It seems the semla is the new Swedish preserved herring, soon to be eaten year round at all Swedish festivities, so we’ll roll with that.
We’ve also been visiting, earlier than usual, Swedish Christmas markets around the city.
This weekend, Styrsö had its own Christmas market that showcased artisan food items made by members of the local community. Under white string lit tents were handcrafted goods, from baked confections, to jewellery, to earthen ware cups and bowls, and hand knit items from wool made from the sheep that live out at this island.
Coming around to festive year end baked confections such as gingerbread snaps (pepparkakor) and saffron buns (lussekatter), we’ve managed to bring home several bundles of lusserkatter from various bakeries and grocery runs. It came to a point where I really just wanted to taste a saffron bun made from a recipe I used in 2012. Thank goodness that recipe from 2012 was saved, else it’ll be the task of a full tried and tested literature review online again, plus a couple of rounds in the kitchen to come to that most favourite lussekatter recipe at Easter next year.
Avoiding lusekatter as the new Swedish preserved herring, we baked our year’s first batch of lussekatter over this weekend, and boy was it a relief to finally bite into something you really want to have, just for now, albeit full month ahead of the St. Lucia celebrations.
I think our over enthusiasm for lussekatter making means that our first batch of the year might be also, our last, but they freeze well, and we can easily bypass all other tempting saffron buns that we come across on our grocery runs… unless we are wanting something new, and a saffron bun made with a different recipe of course.
So…lussekatter as the next new Swedish preserved herring? Maybe.
The Christmas market at Styrsö 2022 brought some beautiful artisan goods from baked confections to handknit items.
Handcrafted pottery essentials.
Jars of mixed berry conserve for the winter keeps.
A tiny sheep, made from the wool gathered from the sheep that live on Styrsö. Cutest ever, both this little felt thing, and the live ones in the fields here.
A teddy bear made from the wool of sheep that live out on Styrsö.