Fat Tuesday – the day of the Semla 2025
Publish date: 6 November 2024
Round, stodgy and spilling over with whipped cream on all sides, but always irresistible. The Swedish Semla is so popular it has its own day – Fat Tuesday.
Have you ever tried a Swedish semla? It's a sweet wheat bun filled with whipped cream and almond paste, lightly dusted with icing sugar, and sometimes served in warm milk. What's not to love?
The beloved semla is a seasonal treat, and it's celebrated with the consumption of at least one semla on the day before the start of Lent, called Fat Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday (next up on March 4, 2025). But don't be sad if the date doesn't match your visit – the Swedes crave their semlor (plural) so much that many bakeries and cafés start making them just after New Year's Eve, and many don't stop serving them until Easter is over.
Origins of the semla
Don't know what a semla is? Here's what you need to know:
- The semla is a cream-filled bun with local variations in Northern Europe. Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Germany all have a variation of the pastry.
- A modern Swedish semla – is usually a cardamon-flavored wheat bun sliced in half. The bottom half is carved out and filled with sweet almond pulp mandelmassa* and whipped cream. The top half (or "the hat") is decorated with powdered sugar.
- The old-school way of eating a semla, ie. in a bowl of hot milk, has somewhat fallen out of fashion. It can still be found in some bakeries, though. This type of semla is called hetvägg.
- The semla is said to have been introduced in Sweden during the 16th century and was heavily associated with Christianity. It was only eaten, preferably in large quantities, on Shrove Tuesday (called Fettisdagen in Sweden) before the fast leading up to Easter.
- Nowadays, you'll notice the first semlas appearing in bakeries and on store shelves just before or after Christmas. Some bakeries also continue selling them until the Easter holidays. Around 40-50 million semlas are sold every year in Sweden.
- The Swedish King Adolf Fredrik famously died on Shrove Tuesday 1771 after, according to legend, binge-eating copious amounts of semlor. While the king did indeed die of indigestion, it would be unfair to blame the semla as he most likely overindulged in lobster, smoked herring, caviar, champagne, and sauerkraut, too.
*similar to marzipan, but with a higher proportion of almonds
If you're allergic to nuts (or would just rather skip almonds) many bakeries are offering a vanilla custard filling instead of almond paste. There are also gluten-free semlor, vegan semlor, and so on. In recent years, the classic Semla recipe has even been remade into other new, creative versions such as the Semla Wrap, the 'Pink and plant-based Semla', and the Cronut Semla. This year is bound to be no different, with new experimental takes on the beloved bun.
Curious to try a semla? Listed below are some popular bakeries and cafés to check out!