A Swedish "Semla"

½ pkg of yeast (25 g)
75 g margarine
2 dl milk
1 egg
1 ml salt
½ teaspoon cardamom
½ dl sugar
7 dl flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 egg

FILLING AND TOPPING:
almond paste, roughly grated
whipping cream
milk
icing sugar

Melt the margarine in a sauce pan, add the milk and make it lukewarm.
Put crumbled fresh yeast into a bowl, add some of the liquid and dissolve yeast.
Add the remaining liquid, salt, cardamom, egg, sugar and 6 dl of the flour.
Mix together and work into a dough, a kitchen-machine makes this easy.
Allow the dough to rise for 30 minutes, covered with a towel.
Then mix baking powder and the remaining flour and work the mixture into the dough.
Knead dough until smooth.
Form dough into 12 small balls, if you want big buns, fewer.
Place the buns on lightly greased baking sheets, cover and let them rise for 35-40 minutes.
Beat the egg and brush onto the buns for glazing.
Bake in the middle of the oven at 250 C about 10 minutes.
Let them cool off at a wire rack, cowered with a towel.

DO THIS BEFORE EATING THEM:
Cut off a circular piece on top of the bun. This piece will make a lid on top later on.
Scoop out the interior of the bun with a spoon to make a hole.
Mix grated almond paste with the bread crumbs from the bun, add some milk and put this smooth mixture into the hole of the buns.
Whip the cream and put on top of the filling.
To crown the buns, place the lid on top of the filling and decorate with some icing sugar.

When I was a child we had these buns only on Shrove Tuesday together with warm milk in a deep plate.They were eaten with a spoon (this year 2007 Shrove Tuesday is on February 20).

The main meal was *Swedish Brown Beans served with thin slices of salted fried pork.

*Ingredients: 4 dl brown beans, 1 liter water, 1 teaspoon salt, 2 teaspoons white distilled vinegar, 2-3 tablespoons syrup molasses, 1 tablespoon potato flour or corn starch, salt to taste

Directions: Rinse the brown beans and soak them in cold water overnight. Let them simmer, well covered by water, add some salt, until they are very soft. This normally takes 1 and 1/2 hours. Check now and then and add more water if required. Add the white distilled vinegar, then the potato flour suspended in cold water as a thickener. Heat briefly.
Some of the typical combinations for this bean in Swedish cooking includes pairing it with bacon, ham, chunks of pork or Swedish meatballs.

Once upon a time Sweden was a catholic country (before the sixteenth century). Shrove Tuesday was then the last day before Lent and people ate a lot to manage the fast for several weeks (probably it was not a forbidden thing to eat buns during Lent). The old version of a "semla" was just a plain bun with no filling at all. It was eaten in a bowl of warm milk and called "hetvägg" ( from the German "heisse Wecken"). Around 1900 the "semla" acquired its modern look: a topping of whipped cream with a lid cut from the bun.

With Protestantism (1593) Sweden stopped observing Lent. The true meaning of Shrove Tuesday is now lost and why we eat these buns is forgotten.

Semla; Wikipedia

Link to the recipe in Swedish 4 Fettisdagsbullar