Britt-Arnhilds matseddel

Fastelavnsboller, pastries before Lent

It is the carnival time, or the last days before Lent starts. A period which is filled with traditions, and often the strongest traditions, those which survive, are the traditions concerning food. On facebook this week-end alot of my friends have written about the baking of "fastelavnsboller" or semlor as Sewdish Ilva call them. I see from what Ilva has written that in Sweden they are typical for Fat Tuesday, and this differes a little from the Norwegian traditions. here they are for Sunday before lent, "fastelavnssøndag".

Traditions are important, and in The Blue Café I try to follow the traditions as best as I can. During the period of carnival the food is rich, you are supposed to fill up before Lent starts. I don't say totally no to meat during Lent, but still I try to make our menues simpler, with less meat, less sweets. Then it is nice to feast with food now, these last days before Lent starts, and the cream filled pastries which we call fastelavnsboller, are perfect for that.

fastelavnsboller

300g butter
1 liter milk or water

100g fresh yeast

1 teaspoon baking powder

a little salt

2dl sugar

white flour

Melt the butter, add milk/water and warm till fingerwarm. Add the fresh yeast. Mix flour, suger and salt and add the fluid. Mix/knead well. Let the dough raise for almost an hour. Bake round pastries and let them raise for at least 30 minutes. Bake for 10-15 minutes at 220C.

Eat them cold, filled with whiped cream. At "fastelavnssøndag" we always hide a miniature Venezian ceramic mask in one of the fastelavndsboller. The one who finds the mask gets a little gift.

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Music for the fastelavnsboller? It can't be anything else than Saint Saëns and Le Carneval des Animaux, can it :-)

 

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This post was posted a year ago on my old Blue Café blog on blogspot.

 

You find more about Lent and the traditions in my book "40 dager - fra karneval til oppstandelse"

Welcome to the new Blue Cafe

For several years I've had a food blog over at blogspot called The Blue Café. It is time to move forward, or at least moving the foodblog over to typepad. I've kept the name, but instead of moving all the posts over, I am starting fresh. From time to time I might move something over here, but mostly there will be new stuff, new foodtalk, new recipes, new photos.

I am no chef, I don't call myself a master in the kitchen. But I love to cook, love to bake, love to create meals and most of the time love the daily challenges in the kitchen. Normally we are three people eating our meals in The Blue Cafe, me, my husband Terje and our teenaged daughter Marta. Three older kids have left home to build their own nests, but they all live close and come home often to enjoy the Blue Cafe food. Family and friends also find their way to our home and our table quite often. Cooking is never boring in The Blue Cafe.

The food in The Blue Cafe is mostly influenced by the traditional Norwegian kitchen, but as I am a world wide traveller and a lover of food as I go, my cooking will be spiced from my travels, from reading and from foodblogs I read. The recipes here will be my own, but often adapted from the worn green handsritten recipe book I started when I married, 30 years ago.

It is a lovely white Christmas day here today. We plan to go cross country skiing, and I was up early to make boller, or sweet pastries to bring with us for an outdoor lunch. I planned the baking quite late last night and sent out oldest and youngest kid (oldest one is still home for the holidays) to buy yeast and butter. What I forgot was flour. I was so sure we still had quite alot in the cupboard, forgetting all about all the baking we did before Christmas.

Well, there was stillalmost half a paperbag of white flour left, so by reducing yeast, sugar, butter and water I still was able to make 20 boller.

Boller

100g butter

 3dl water

sugar

50gr fresh yeast

white flour

Melt the butter, add the water and still till it is fingerward. Mix with suger, yeast and flour in the kitchen aid machine till you have a smouth dough. Let rise for almost an hour. Roll out 20 boller/sweet pastries. Let raise for another 30 minutes. Bake for 10-12 minutes in 225Celcius

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Bob Dylan's new Christmas album was in my cd-player while I bakes out these boller. Enjoy the pastries, enjoy the music and enjpoy the snow and the cross country skiing :-)