Swedish Semla Bread

Ingredients

  • 5½ Tbs butter
  • 8½ oz. 2% milk
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 10 tsp sugar
  • 1 tsp ground cardamom
  • 1 egg
  • 3⅔ cups bread flour
  • 2 tsp active dry yeast
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 7 oz. almond paste
  • 3½ oz. milk
  • 7-10 oz. whipping cream
  • powdered sugar
    		•

    Preparation

    1. Melt the butter in a sauce pan. Add milk and heat until it feels warm.
    2. Add salt, sugar, cardamom, and egg. Stir and heat until warm, but not hot. You do not want the egg to cook.
    3. Pour into the bread machine pan.
    4. Add flour, baking powder, and yeast. Set bread machine for a normal loaf, and let it go.

    Semlor, or cardamom buns, are a Lent tradition in Sweden. Normally this recipe would make ten to twelve rolls, which you could use a bread machine to form the dough, then divide, raise one last time, and bake on a cookie sheet at 435 degrees for 10 minutes.

    From there, you would cut a triangular cap off the top of each roll, dig out a little of the bread, crumble and mix with the milk and almond paste. Divide the paste mixture between each roll, and top with whipping cream, which you have whipped into whipped cream. Replace the triangular cap and dust with powdered suger.

    You can serve this with coffee, or the traditional way, in a bowl of hot milk.

    The entire loaf, made with almond milk, is right at 2,675 calories.