Only in English.

The yellow saffron buns with 2 raisins in each bun is called Lussekatter or you can say Lussecats;)

It is typically to eat these around the 13th of December when we celebrate Lucia here in Sweden. There are also old pagan stories about a pagan light goddess who brings the light to us in the darkest of winter times. My guess is that we up north, in one or another way, always have been celebrating the lights during winter times since it is pretty dark from early afternoon around 4pm until the next morning at 9am from November to March.

The tradition is to have some soft drinks as Julmust or glögg ( mulled wine non alcoholic) with lussekatter and gingerbread cookies served after looking at the songs performed by the Luciatåg ( The Lucia parade) early in the morning.

Ingredients for 30 Lussekatter

50 g yeast (fresh yeast is the best!)

175 g butter

1 or 2 bags of saffron of 0.5 g (I had 1 bag at home and that was enough I think)

2 dl/180 g sugar

5 dl/ 200 ml milk

1/2 tsk/teaspoon salt

About 1 1/2 l wheat flour (1 1/2 l corresponds to 900 g)

How to do the Lussekatter / Lussecats

Get a big bowl for the dough, a saucepan for melting the butter, a scale to weigh the dough, 2 oven plates and parchment paper. Set the oven to 200 ° C / 392 ° F

Let’s start baking some cats shall we

• Crumble the yeast in the dough bowl.
• Melt the butter in saucepan. Stir the saffron into the melted butter. Add the milk and lukewarm the dough spatula to about 37 ° C / 98.60 ° F
• Stir the yeast into a little of the dough spatula and then get the rest into the bowl when the yeast has dissolved
• Put the sugar and salt into the bowl as well with the yeast
• Work almost all wheat flour into the dough … A great tips is to not pour all the flour into the dough at once but feel your way forward how the dough feels. It should feel like you pointing at a well filled balloon that bounce back at you with a fresh non stick surface … Ah you get the picture don’t you?
• Work the dough for about 5 minutes in a machine or 10 minutes by hand. Put it back into the bowl. Sprinkle some flour over the dough and cover it with a clean! kitchen towel. Let it ferment under a baking sheet for 30-45 minutes
• Now take the dough out on the floured workbench and work some flour into the dough if needed. Take a scale if you got one and weight up 60g dough balls for all the dough to get same size at the lussekatter

Make the lussekatter as shown in the photo below

• Place the lussekatter on oven plates with parchment paper. Press in raisins now or do it later when brushing with beaten egg
• Let the lussekatterna ferment under a baking sheet for 30-45 minutes
• Brushing and garnishing: Brush with beaten egg and add raisins now if not earlier.

Bake the buns in the middle of the oven for 8-10 minutes. After you taken the buns out from oven let them cool on a wire rack under a baking sheet for a while. Make yourself a nice cup of coffee, hot chocolate, hot mulled wine or cup of tea to have with your fresh baked Lussekatt.