Swedish · Dessert
Semla
- Advanced
- 45 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, warm spice humming through the middle, settling low and earthy.
Ingredients
- 500 g strong white flour
- 250 ml whole milk
- 12 g instant yeast
- 75 g caster sugar
- 6 g salt
- 1 egg, plus 1 beaten egg for washing
- 8 g green cardamom pods
- 75 g soft butter
- 200 g almond paste, half almond by weight
- 100 ml whole milk for the filling
- 400 ml double cream, very cold
- icing sugar, for dusting
Equipment
Piping bag · Mortar & pestle
The skills inside
Mashing & puréeingProofing: the rise before the oven
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg · nuts
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Crack the cardamom pods open, throw the papery husks away and grind only the black seeds to a fine powder in a mortar, at the bench, minutes before you mix.
- Warm the milk to 37C (99F), then mix and knead it with the flour, yeast, sugar, salt, egg and cardamom until the dough pulls clean off the bowl and a stretched piece goes translucent; work the soft butter in last.
- Prove until doubled, divide into twelve 80 g balls, roll each tight against the bench and prove again until a poked finger leaves a dent that fills back slowly.
- Egg wash and bake at 220C (430F) for 8 to 10 minutes to a deep gold that sounds hollow underneath; cool completely or the cream will slide off. 10 min
- Cut an angled lid from each bun, scoop a walnut of crumb from inside and mash it with the almond paste and enough milk to make a thick spoonable filling; spoon it back in.
- Whip the cream to firm peaks, pipe it high, cap with the lid and dust heavily with icing sugar.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Proofing: the rise before the oven 78 recipes
- Judged on volume against the container rather than on the clock: visibly grown, and grown by roughly the amount the recipe describes.
- The poke test agrees: a floured fingertip pressed a centimetre in leaves a dent that springs back slowly and only part of the way. Straight back means it is not ready; no spring at all means it has gone.
- The surface is domed, smooth, and slightly sheened: not cratered, wrinkled, or collapsed, and not skinned over and dry from proofing uncovered.
- Handled, it feels alive and airy: light for its size, with bubbles visible under the skin.
- It springs in the oven: the piece lifts in the first minutes and the scores open. A shape that does not move at all was proofed past its point before it went in.
Where it goes wrong It was proofed to the clock in a kitchen colder or warmer than the recipe assumed: overproofed, it collapses as the blade touches it and bakes flat and dense with a sour edge; underproofed, it tears at the side and bakes tight.
Mashing & puréeing 114 recipes
- Smooth to the degree the dish asks for, judged on the tongue rather than by eye: no lumps, no fibres, no grit, unless texture is the point.
- No gluey elasticity: a spoonful drops cleanly off the spoon rather than stretching in a rope behind it.
- The consistency holds: it mounds on a spoon and stays there, neither slumping flat nor standing so stiff that a spoon has to cut it.
- Nothing separates on the plate: no water or fat weeping out into a ring within a minute of serving.
- The colour is even throughout, with no streaks of unincorporated fat, liquid, or seasoning at the edges of the bowl.
Where it goes wrong A starchy ingredient met a high-speed blade, so the cells burst and released their starch: what should be light comes out as an elastic glue that lifts off the spoon in one mass.
At the Table
- The Pour
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- Zero-Proof
- Jasmine tea
The sweetness rule is absolute: the pour must be sweeter than the plate, and acid keeps it from cloying.
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