Semla all around

Semlor can be bought all year round, but in February, you suddenly see lots of semlor on sale.


Semla offer at 7-11.

Today, Qiang and I decide to take this opportunity to fatten ourselves up with Semla. But instead of 7-11, we went to Hemkop in T-centralen to buy Semla at 2 for 20 kronors. This is quite a good deal, cos the other time I bought one for 35 kronors in Uppsala when it wasn't during the season.


Boxes of semlor for sale






Semla! It tastes very good. Feel very satisfied after the semla, but you feel that you've just eaten a whole lot of fats, which is probably true. You can't eat too much of this without getting fat because it is a traditional pastry well-known for its decadence.

Haha... Read on...

A semla is a traditional Swedish pastry. The name derives from the Latin semilia, which was the name used for the finest quality wheat flour. There are several different ways to eat a semla and several different names for it, but the most common way today is to have the bun filled with almond paste and whipped cream and a lid of the bun covered with icing sugar.
It is traditional that the pastry is consumed on Shrove Tuesday, which in Sweden is known as Fettisdagen or "Fat Tuesday", but it is seasonally available from New Year's until the start of Lent. This is the last day before Lent begins, which is always on a Wednesday. There are traditionally forty days in Lent which are marked by fasting, both from foods and festivities. Each Swede consumes on average five pieces of the pastry each year, not including the ones that are home made.

King Adolf Frederick of Sweden died of digestion problems on February 12, 1771 after consuming a meal consisting of lobster, caviar, sour cabbage, smoked herring and champagne that was topped off by 14 servings of his favourite dessert hetvägg, which is a semla served in a bowl of hot milk.