Global Journey Blog Vol 6 Matsuda Hinata
Hello everyone. I’m Hinata Matsuda. I finally returned to Japan from Sweden!
I had a lot of thoughts while coming back to Japan from Sweden, so I thought I would write about them in this blog, but before that, I wanted to talk about my favorite Swedish pastry, semla, so I'm going to focus on semla this time!
What is Semla?
It is a pastry that looks like this!
This bread is not hard at all, but soft and fluffy enough to be eaten with a fork. The bread itself is a little sweet. Do you know the spice cardamom? It has a very strong scent and it is used in the dough of this bread. It is hard to explain, but I wanna eat more after I ate them, and the taste goes well with the sweet cream. The white cream is almost not sweet, and there is usually some kind of almond cream under it, but it is sweeter than the white cream. In my opinion, the sweetness is just right and it is really good with tea.
From the website's translation 👇.[https://sweden.se/culture/food/the-semla-a-swedish-delicacy]
The Swedes have cherished this pastry since the 16th century and first served it on Maundy Tuesday, known as "Fat Tuesday" (fetisdagen in Swedish). This extravaganza was the last feast before the beginning of Lent, a 40-day religious fasting period. Interestingly, the term "Lent" ("Lenz" in German) means "spring.
It is now eaten until before the beginning of Easter, and is a limited time sweets from about January to March, and some people say that eating it reminds them that spring is coming.
I went to Sweden in January 2023, so semla was already available in cafes then. I was surprised at the strong flavor of cardamom I first tasted then, but the fork-able softness of the bread and the sweet cream became a habit and I was hooked. However, I didn't know at the time that semla was an underground-only pastry, so I remember how sad I was when it suddenly disappeared from the store in March.
And so it came in January 2024. It was the time for Semra! It was already the month I was going back home, so I decided to eat a a lot of them haha
There were many different types of semla inGothenburg. I would like to share with you some of the semla I ate in the two weeks before I left.
This semla is from a place called Café Husaren and is my favorite semla!
It has a strong cardamom aroma, but not too strong, and the bread is soft, sweet, and creamy, and just delicious. The price is about SEK60 (810 yen).
The next semla I would like to introduce is the semla sold in the cake section of a supermarket called ICA. The dough of this semla is like puff pastry, and it is delicious. This puff pastry does not taste like cardamom. The cream is not divided into whipped cream and almond cream, as I mentioned before, but rather the cream is filled with chopped almonds, which is rough and has an interesting texture. Sometimes when I want something sweet and creamy, this is just what I need. (I wish I could go to Sweden right now and eat them haha.)
And to my surprise, this semla was made by a friend of mine. The cream was just the right amount of sweetness, and I could feel the cardamom and almond cream, which was also delicious, and I was surprised and happy to hear that she had made this and brought it to me. I would like to make such a challenging-looking pastry someday too.
Lastly, I would like to introduce one gelato. The gelato on the left is cardamom gelato. I remember how happy I was when I took a bite and realized that it tasted like semla! It was probably the first time I tasted cardamom in Semra, so in my mind, the taste of cardamom = the taste of Semra.
I also recommend this gelato shop!
Grönsakstorget 1, 411 17 Göteborg, Sweden
This blog is a bit short and it was the Semla version!
Please check the following blog too!