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Local Sweden
3 days ago
- General
- Local Sweden
Swedish Fika Calendar: Why you should spend today eating strawberry cake
The Local's Fika Calendar walks you through a whole year of Sweden's coffee-and-cake tradition, with information on the pastries and the history behind them. Today is Sweden's National Day, which means it's time to tuck into a National Day pastry. Advertisement Hej and welcome to the latest instalment of The Local's Fika Calendar, where we guide you through the most important cake, pastry and other food-related days in the Swedish year. Today is June 6th, Sweden's National Day, where Swedish municipalities up and down the country hold events to welcome new citizens. There is – of course – also a special cake eaten on National Day. This is the inventively-named nationaldagsbakelse (literally: National Day pastry), which usually takes the form of an almond-based cake or tart topped with something creamy (usually whipped cream, almond paste or pastry cream) and fresh strawberries with a sprig of lemon balm. National Day has only been celebrated in Sweden since the 1980s, and has only been a public holiday since 2005, where it was swapped with Whit Monday. Whit Monday always fell on – you guessed it – a Monday, while National Day falls on a fixed day, so it's only a public holiday five out of every seven years. This means that by swapping the two, Swedes' total number of working days increased despite the number of public holidays remaining the same. Advertisement Sweden's National Day pastry was invented in 1994 by Helena Bergsmark, a pastry chef at Café Gateau in Stockholm. Her version was relatively simple with just six ingredients, designed to be easy to make for home bakers. If you buy one at a bakery or konditori they're usually slightly more fancy, perhaps with a layer of chocolate covering the cake layer to stop it from going soggy, or a glaze over the strawberries. Whether you're baking your own nationaldagsbakelse or planning to buy one, we hope you have a great day off. Grattis på nationaldagen, Sverige! Sign up here to receive an email alert every time we publish a new instalment of the Fika Calendar on the site – and if you're a Membership+ subscriber you will receive the full article straight to your inbox. You can expect to receive the newsletter on every important Swedish fika day worth trying, on average two times a month.
Local Sweden
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Local Sweden
Swedish Fika Calendar: Why is one of Sweden's most loved cakes named after Budapest?
The Local's Fika Calendar walks you through a whole year of Sweden's coffee-and-cake tradition, with information on the pastries and the history behind them. Today: make the most of the public holiday by tucking in to a Budapestbakelse. Advertisement Hej and welcome to the latest instalment of The Local's Fika Calendar, where we guide you through the most important cake, pastry and other food-related days in the Swedish year. Today is May 1st, a public holiday in Sweden in order to celebrate the international workers' movement. More importantly as far as this newsletter is concerned, it's also Budapestbakelsens dag. Despite the name, the Budapestbakelse, or Budapest slice, has nothing to do with the city of Budapest, and is an entirely Swedish invention. It's a type of rulltårta, or 'roll cake', similar to a Swiss roll, made with a light and crispy meringue and hazelnut-based cake, filled with whipped cream and some sort of fruit, usually chopped tinned mandarins. Some bakers will fill them with tinned peaches or fresh raspberries instead. Then it's sliced, drizzled in chocolate and served with more whipped cream and fruit. It was invented by Swedish baker Ingvar Strid from Vetlanda in Småland some time between the late 60s and the early 70s, which probably explains the use of tinned fruit. Advertisement It's not immediately obvious why Strid named the cake after Budapest. Was he a particular fan of the Hungarian capital, or was he inspired by the Hungarian Esterházy torte, which is also made from a nutty, meringue-based dough (despite the similarities ending there)? We may never know the real reason behind the cake's name, but one thing's for certain – it's become a Swedish classic, and is definitely worth trying this May 1st.
