Semla

February has come and this time of the year reminds me of the first (and unfortunatelly only one) time that I visited Stockholm.

Back in 2007, Laura, Gaspare and me traveled together from Lubeck to Skavsta airport. The vision of the frosty city and the thousands of islands in the lake was marvellous.
Too bad for us, we only spent the time there from a friday night and departured on Sunday to fly back to Bremen, Germany, the city of our Erasmus student exchange program.
Beyond Gamla Stan, the historical center too much crowded in Italian population for my taste and the regret not to have seen the reindeers in Djurgården, a very common Seven Eleven store offered me a great memory of course related to food.

I am refering to semla or its plural semlor a sweet bun cut into two halves made by cardamom wheat with milk, almonds and whipped cream. On top everything is even sweeter

thanks to powdered sugar. I always thought its flavour was given by poppy seeds but I was mistaken!

The tradition finds its reason to eat these sweets on Mardi Gras and the autenthic receipe is a field of battle to make win every year during Carnival one bakery against another to reach the perfect semla. Even a Semla academy is born.

Here below a short clip from a Swedish tv commercial: poor guys these semlor testers' huh?