Today is Santa Lucia Day, which means celebrations all over Sweden with candles, music, glögg, gingerbread cookies and lucia buns - yeasted saffron buns, with raisins. In honor of the day, I'll do a repost of my recipe for Lucia Buns - Lussekatter, as we call them.
I wrote about Lucia three years ago, and I had another recipe for saffron buns here.
The problem with making saffron buns is that the saffron dries out the dough, and the buns go stale in no time. So make these on the same day as you plan to eat them, or put them in the freezer right away. They really won't keep well.
That said, this recipe is really good and really easy. It has a lot of butter and cream, and that helps to keep the dough nice and moist, and it's really a dream to handle. You don't need much flour at all, and no extra when you shape the buns, and that's always good in terms of moistness. So, do try these - you won't regret it!
Lucia Buns
Makes 20 large ones
100 g fresh yeast
400 ml milk, full-fat
100 ml cream (35-40% fat)
200 g butter
1-1,5 g saffron
200 ml sugar
1 tsp salt
1 egg
1 kilo white flour
Decoration:
1 egg, beaten
raisins
Crumble the yeast into the bowl of your stand mixer (or a regular bowl, if making this by hand). Melt the butter, then add the milk and the cream and heat until it's about 37°C - it should just barely feel warm to the touch. Add this to the yeast and stir until it has dissolved.
Put the saffron with a pinch of sugar in your pestle and mortar, and mix well. Add to the dough, along with salt, sugar, the egg and most of the flour. Work into a smooth and silky dough - it will look pretty sticky, so add the rest of the flour, but don't worry if it's still sticky. It's supposed to be. It shouldn't stick to your fingers though.
Transfer the dough to a clean bowl, and leave to rise, covered, for 45 minutes. Then it's time to shape the dough. I started by dividing the dough into equal portions, using digital kitchen scales. I like my lucia buns fairly large - that, again, helps counter any dryness. The traditional shape is as you can see in the photo below a fairly tight "s". Place raisins in the middle of the swirls on each side.
Place on a cookie sheet, cover, and let the buns rise for about 15 minutes. Brush with a beaten egg, and bake at 200°C for 8-10 minutes.
Recipe in Swedish:
Lussekatter
6 comments:
Anne, as promised I'm wearing your earrings and I made some Lucia buns. I didn't use your recipe, but a trusty one for very moist and light yeasted dough, as I was worried about the saffron (wasn't happy with the buns I made a few years ago). Actually, the recipe is quite similar to yours, coming to think of it (no cream really, but quite a few egg yolks - for 1 kg flour you'd have to use 12!!!). Anyway, they came out fab, and I've blogged about them (and the earrings) here, on my Polish blog:
http://cosniecos.blox.pl/2009/12/Lussekatter-oczka-sw-Lucji.html
I made these yesterday and YUM! Very moist and tasty. Thanks!
Happy Lucia day!
We've just had lussekatter at friends' place :)
My wife and I live in the states and are both part Swedish. With a new daughter and lots of grandparents we wanted a Holiday we could call our own and where we don't have to worry about being spread too thin among the grandparents. So, this year we celebrated St. Lucia day for the first time! I made a hummeromelette (sp?) with Dungeoness crab, and my wife and I made a Lucia wreath. The omelette was excellent, and the wreath was good, if a little undercooked.
Anyway, I've lurked on your blog for quite a while now and thought this was a good opportunity to say hi and Happy St. Lucia day!
A tip for the raisins:
Leave them to soak a few hours in water before use, to prevent them from tasting burnt (and becoming really hard) after baking.
Tried it last sunday and it really worked well! Soft, tasty raisins - yum!
Thanks for sharing - I bookmarked these to try next year!
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