Category: in sweden

weeknotes, 22-23/25

in short: two weeks in sweden, with a detour through the åland islands to attend a philatelic forum. it’s been good.

i have trouble putting the experience of being here into words… i guess most of all, stockholm feels civilized — that’s the word that comes to mind. but it’s also quietly beautiful: streets are clean and parks are taken care of, everything is green and birds we hadn’t seen before crossing our path with their broods in tow. the nights are barely nights and the light wakes us up very early, but it’s hard to mind when everywhere we look there’s light shimmering in the water. we scored a house swap within walking distance of most museums, a cozy place with overflowing bookshelves. the owner became a mini penpal of sorts, emailing often with questions about recycling, the lack of black people in the south of portugal or the range of electric bikes. it felt like a pleasure, through and through.

we saw the vasa ship and the postal museum, and revisited dear old friends that we’ve known for 20 years, each of us settled into a different country. they look the same, only now they have cute kids that speak different languages and look a lot like them.

åland felt pretty special. the ferry is a whole thing — comfortable cabins, supermarkets, live music, restaurants and gaming rooms for the children… the trip lasts 5 hours but it flies by. mariehamn itself feels human sized — you can walk it from end to end. we grabbed some bikes from the hotel and cycled around, into the wetlands and across tiny islands. i’ve always liked islands, the size of them, the geography and terrain. åland has the kind of islands that are just a smooth weathered rock jutting out of the sea — the kind that tove jansson used to spend her summers in (the kind i dream about sometimes, when i’m tired of the world and want to escape). it feels like half of sweden or finland has a hut somewhere, on a island or in the woods.

maybe i’ll write more about the trip at some point… i have some sleep to catch up on, to prepare us for a busy month ahead.

foooood in sweden

kanelbullar recipe

while in sweden, i sent postcards featuring cinnamon rolls to a few friends abroad, singing their praises and deliciousness… one of these friends decided that some baking was in order, so we’ve rolled up our sleeves and baked up the most delicious batch of kanelbullar that have ever left my oven. they’re soft and moist and just perfect. every bite is a guaranteed moan! :)

i found the recipe at chez larssons, and the only tweak we did was to double the amount of cardamom (because we’re all cardamom junkies around here).

you’ll need:

for the dough:
100 grams of butter
5 decilitres of milk
50 grams of yeast
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 decilitres of Sugar
2 tsp ground cardamom
5.4 cups of wheat flour

for the filling:
100 grams of butter
1 decilitre of sugar
2 tsp cinnamon

for the top:
1 egg
pearl sugar

procedure:
melt the butter, add the milk and heat until finger warm (not too hot!). crumble the yeast into a bowl. add a little bit of the milk/butter mixture and stir until the yeast is dissolved. add the rest of the milk/butter mixture, salt, sugar and ground cardamom and 2/3 of the flour.

mix and add flour until the dough comes off the sides of the bowl. save a little bit of flour for later.

cover the dough with a tea towel and let it rise until double the size, about 35-40 minutes.

mix the dough for a few minutes in the bowl and then knead it on the flour dusted work top with the rest of the flour, until it doesn’t stick too much.

then divide the dough into two equal parts. use a rolling pin to flatten the two dough parts into 20×40 cm each. mix the filling ingredients in a small bowl and spread the butter/sugar/cinnamon filling on the dough.

fold dough in half length-wise, then cut and twist according to the photos on this post so that you make pretty little knots.

put the knots on a covered or greased baking sheet. let rise under a tea towel for 20 minutes. whisk the egg in a bowl and use a pastry brush to brush the egg onto the knots. sprinkle some pearl sugar on top.

place in the middle of a 250C oven for 8-10 minutes until gloriously brown.

you’ll be licking your hands too…

foooood in sweden

the chocolate kisses shop

flavoured marshmallow balls, covered in chocolate. sometimes, happiness is a really simple thing indeed! :)

foooood in sweden

kanelbullar!

we must have eaten a cinnamon bun every single day in sweden… the irresistible combination of cinnamon and cardamom makes them my favourite “cake”! it’s funny that they look a bit dry on the outside, but then inside they’re always moist and delicious… yum! :)

in sweden traveling

skåne roadtrip!

roadtrips are practically an art form, but like all travel, they must be done with the right people. for us, this means easygoing friends who share our interest in food, nice landscapes and all kinds of kitschy or cute things. so when our hosts (lovers of all things kitsch and tasty like us) suggested we do a roadtrip around skåne, our answer was a very enthusiastic YES! :D

in the morning, we rented a wreck and drove around the countryside of central skåne, dodging the heavy rain in search of a famous moose park… which was unfortunately closed. all we saw were 3 sad mooses…

to make up for that small setback, we decided to stop on one of the biggest second hand stores of the region, where we checked out the dishes and christmas decorations…

the weather had cleared up by then, so we did a first quick stop by the baltic sea, to check out the beach and the war bunkers that still exist there:

we also stopped at a burial site that we saw on the way. the stones in this region are all very round, due to erosion.

by then it was time for fika, the traditional swedish coffee break, so we stopped at a little quaint town by the sea. after having crossed the dozens of fields of apple farms, we couldn’t resist a piece of apple pie!

then we turned south, driving along the coast. there are many signs of bronze age in this part of sweden, and we got to see a few marks of the early populations on the polished coastal stones. boats and axes are featured prominently.

a bit further southt, we made a detour to see ale’s stones, sweden’s own stonehenge: a set of massive stones set in an ellipse on a cliff by the sea. nobody seems to know very well why they’re there, but they’re quite impressive nonetheless – and the cows seemed to love them as scratching posts!

we couldn’t resist the calling of the sea, so naturally we descended the cliff and picked rocks at the beach.

with the sea air opening our appetite, we had to make a pit stop for refuel. we drove by a place in skurup that has awesome fast food: meatballs with lingon jam, red danish sausage, fish and chips, and an amazing wrap with sausage, cucumber and mashed potatoes. skurup is famous for being the starting place for the wonderful adventures of nils (the boy that traveled sweden on a goose), and they have a great slogan “when in europe, don’t miss skurup”. it’s a really small place, but i guess it’s worth it for the food and the sweets! :P

on the way home, we passed fields upon fields of sugar beets… i had never seen one up close, so we made a quick stop on a recently harvested field to snatch a leftover beet, which we cleaned and chopped when we got home. it didn’t taste like much except… sweet! :)

all in all, a very successful roadtrip!