A quick guide to Swedish bakelser
There’s a whole world out there when it comes to having something sweet with your fika. This is a quick guide that’ll take you through some of the common bakelser and other treats you’ll find in Swedish coffee houses and bakeries, as well as those you might find at a fika in a Swedish home.
Bullar
Ah, bullar. The quintessential Swedish pastry. Traditional fillings include cinnamon, cardamom, vanilla, almond or even a combination. They might look somewhat similar to an American cinnamon roll, but they’re usually not as sweet, and no…there’s (usually) no icing here. Instead, you might find pearl sugar (also known as nib sugar) sprinkled on top.
However, nowadays there’s many more variants on the humble bulle – there’s sockerbullar (sugar buns) or solbullar (sun buns) which are filled with a vanilla custard and rolled in sugar, fruit-based buns like rabarber-bullar (rhubarb buns) and blåbärs-bullar (blueberry buns) and countless more than we could fit in. The short story? You can never go wrong with a bulle alongside your coffee.
There’s also a few special seasonal varieties, such as the semla. In Sweden, Shrove Tuesday is known as ‘fettisdagen’ (literally…’fat day’), and instead of pancakes, we eat semlor. They’re normally made of a cardamom bun that’s had it’s top cut off and then been hollowed out. Inside, they’re stuffed with a filling of marzipan, cream and the scraped-out bun filling. They’re then topped with more cream, and the top is put back on like a little hat.
Kakor
Kaka (cake) can mean a few different things to Swedes, depending on the specifics. If you’re thinking of the equivalent of say a sponge cake, then Swedes refer to this as ‘mjuk kaka’ (literal translation: soft cake).
One popular mjuk kaka often served at home for fika is sockerkaka (literal translation: sugar cake). Families often have their own recipe, but it’s typically made from flour, sugar, butter, baking powder, and a whole lot of eggs. It’s also often used as the base layers for a tårta, which we’ll get to in just a bit.
Another famous kaka is kladdkaka (literal translation: sticky cake). You might also see it translated as mud cake, since it’s a rich chocolate cake that has a crackly top and a gooey inside. Think of slightly underbaked brownies in a cake tin, and you’ve basically got a kladdkaka.
Tårtor & bakelser
Tårtor are usually differentiated from a kaka, though they’re usually both translated to cake in English. The details tend to lie in the complexity of baking a ‘tårta’, which is the name normally given to cakes that have layers of sponge and filling, as well as being decorated (with whipped cream, or marzipan, or icing, and so on). They’re often served for more special occasions of fika, like a birthday or your nameday.
One of the most well known tårtor is the princesstårta (literal translation: princess cake). Recipes vary, but typically the cake is made up of the following (going from bottom to top):
- a sponge base
- jam (raspberry is traditional!)
- another sponge layer
- vanilla custard
- yet another sponge layer
- whipped cream
- another thin layer of sponge (this is sometimes skipped)
- green marzipan (phew, we made it!)
Green marzipan is what signifies it as a princesstårta. If the marzipan is yellow, it’s known as a princetårta (prince cake), and if it’s pink, it’s called operatårta (opera cake).
A bakelser, on the other hand, is a tårta made in a single portion. Bakelser differs from a slice of a tårta, which would just be a tårtbit (cake bit). Therefore, a tårta might exist in both formats -as a whole tårta (intended for a group of people…though who are we to judge?) and a bakelser.
Småkakor
Småkakor (literal translation: small cakes) are a collective name for small biscuit-like baked goods that are made from a type of ‘mother’ dough called ‘mördeg’ (literal translation: tender dough), typically made up of flour, water, sugar, and butter. Think of them like the Swedish equivalent to biscuits, cookies, biscotti, and so on. They’re typically cute and small enough to eat in one or two bites. From that base dough, you can make many, many variations of småkakor – some are filled, some are plain, some are more decorated. They’re very commonly baked for fika at home, but you can also find bags of them for sale in most Swedish bakeries. Most importantly though, they’re all delicious.
Dammsugare
First things first, dammsugare means hoover. Yes, really. And yes, the Swedish word for hoover translates literally as ‘dust-sucker’. We’re quite a blunt language. They are usually made up of crushed biscuits, butter and cocoa powder that’s been mixed together, covered in marzipan, and dipped in chocolate. They’re also known as punschrullar (punch rolls) if they contain punsch liqueur. Their name not only refers to their appearance of older models of hoovers, but from the supposed practice of using up leftover biscuit crumbs in a bakery. They’re often a bit of a marmite-sweet treat, but we recommend giving them a go at least once, so that you know yourself if you love them or hate them!
Biskvi
Biskvi are another small pastry that’s made of an almond macaron-like bottom, filled with a vanilla buttercream, and covered in a thin layer of (usually) chocolate. A variant called the Sarah-Bernandt biskvi (named after the French actress) swaps out the buttercream for a chocolate truffle filling. You’ll also find other versions, like white chocolate, raspberry and yes, of course…liquorice biskvier.
You can often find the normal (palm-sized) and mini biskvi (tea-spoon sized!) these days in bakeries…the only danger is eating too many of them.
