Virtual Holiday Party: December 13 (St. Lucia Day)
I said yesterday that if we reached the fundraising goal I would be so HAPPY (insert sparkly unicorn gif) I would host a virtual holiday blog party. And I’m a woman of my word.
So! Today is the first day of our virtual holiday party here in the Smoking Lounge. It’s St. Lucia Day, and since my blog is the top reclusive feminist American blog in Scandinavia, it’s only right that we should celebrate in proper Swedish style. I’ve always wanted to bake lussekatter, or Lucia Cats, the saffron-flavored sweet buns that are supposed to be traditional fare in Sweden for the holiday:
Stock photo of lussekatter.
We have some old saffron in the spice cabinet, so today I baked the rolls—and I mean I really baked them, in real life in my real kitchen. And…they didn’t quite turn out right. They look right, and the flavor is very nice, but the dough just didn’t rise properly. The buns are too dense and chewy. This is the recipe I used. Maybe some of you Scandinavians can tell me what went wrong.
Next year I’m going for the candles-on-the-head thing:
11 Responses to “Virtual Holiday Party: December 13 (St. Lucia Day)”
-
Carmonn says:
Congratulations and best wishes, but–didn’t the Finns love you long before the Swedes loved you? Where’s the love for upstart breakaway parts of Sweden?
December 13th, 2011 at 9:15 pm EST -
Violet Socks says:
I love the Finns! In fact, in my virtual life in the Smoking Lounge I have a summer cabin in Finland.
-
Adrienne in CA says:
That Judy Davis clip is wonderful. Not sure I could stomach watching a Dennis Leary movie in order to see more of her, though.
-
quixote says:
OMG! From now till forever, I am celebrating Christmas by wearing lit candles! That is just absolutely the Best Thing Ever. Now even I am feeling festive. First time this year!
Cheers to all in the Smoking Lounge! /*raises a liqueur glass of Baileys Irish Creme*/
-
lynnerkat says:
Love the candle head gear. If I wore them, I’d torch the house..maybe not such a bad idea. My Norwegian friends always made marzipan cookies. Loved them- cookies and the people. Have fun baking.
-
Violet Socks says:
Quixote, we are going to be knocking back the virtual Baileys EVERY DAY from now until Christmas. And afterwards too. I’m serious. Virtual Christmas on the blog. I’m going to be making and baking for presents this year, so it will be fun to have the company.
-
Val says:
Fashionably late to the party (the story of my life ;-)
Pour me a shot! Salud to all my virtual friends! -
LabRat says:
Not Scandinavian, but…
How much/how hard did you knead the dough? I see there’s an instruction in there to do it “lightly” and only two or three times, which suggests to me that this is one of those baked goods where getting the gluten development Just Right is a tricky thing. Not enough kneading and folding and it never really rises because it doesn’t have the structure to; too much and it becomes too dense.
At least, I know this is the secret to getting buttermilk biscuits that are big and fluffy on the inside. Not in the recipe, in the cook’s hands…
-
tallbacka says:
I would recommend CHOKLADBOLLAR instead. No connection to Lucia but delicious and easy to make.
Here is a google translated recipe with pictures
http://translate.google.com/tr.....38;act=url
use coffee, I don’t know where they got the idea of using juice.I would also point out that the Swedish speaking Finns celebrate Lucia Day too so the Finns have no reason to feel ignored
-
Violet Socks says:
I see there’s an instruction in there to do it “lightly” and only two or three times, which suggests to me that this is one of those baked goods where getting the gluten development Just Right is a tricky thing.
I agree. The kneading instructions were strange; my solution was to knead it as little as possible to get it to the stage where it was elastic and the gluten was doing its thing. We do a lot of bread baking in this house, so it’s not an unfamiliar process. But this recipe was weird. I personally think there were two problems:
1. Bad yeast (we’ve been having that problem with our sourdough rolls; the Fleischmann’s people are falling down on the job!)
2. Too much flour, even though I used quite a bit less than the recipe called for. I think the dough needed to be stickier.The taste of the rolls is wonderful; my SIL had one today and loved it. I’m going to try baking this again with less flour, and maybe with some extra coddling to start the yeast.
-
Nessum says:
Too much flour …
Violet, you’re actually on to something here. The density of American flour is quite different from Scandinavian (/European?), so equal measures don’t weigh the same. I’ve had that problem too, when baking my Scandinavian Christmas cookies in the US. (Apart from the problem of not only correctly translate the names of the spices, but also actually find them, heh.)
Unfortunately never found a conversion table though, so it was sort of
if at first you don’t succeed, try and try and try again. :D
