As someone with many sweet teeth, one thing I love about Sweden is its “excuses” to always have something sweet between meals. Thanks to its most celebrated tradition, Fika. It seems to me that despite the lagom value, Swedes are quite into cake and pastry; they even have special days to celebrate almost all of them. Here is the timeline for those sweet days.
January
The period between Christmas and Easter is the time for semla. This wheat flour bun, flavoured with cardamom and filled with almond paste and whipped cream, was originally eaten only on Shrove Tuesday (the day before Ash Wednesday) as the last festive food before Lent. However, as the Swedes stopped observing a strict fasting for Lent, semlor are now available in shops and bakeries every day from shortly after Christmas until Easter.
February
You can still easily find semla on February because Shrove Tuesday usually falls either on February or March, but this month also has another special day. February 3 is the day of carrot cake.
March
On March, you have at least two special threats: Punschrullens Dag (punch roll day) on 7th of March and Våffledagen (waffle day) on March 25. Punschrulle is also called dammsugare, which means vacuum cleaner due to its resembling shape of a vacuum cleaner that was common in the 1920s. This pastry is easy to find in any confectionery and is traditionally colored green with chocolate coating in both ends.
For the Waffle Day, it is believed that it comes from a mispronunciation of spring day that has religious roots. Instead of “spring day”, a linguistic mix took place and people began to say “waffle day”. Thus, the tradition of eating waffles with cream and jam arose on March 25.
April
Sadly, there is no cake related day on this month. Or do you know any?
