Recipe: Swedish saffron buns (lussekatt or lussebulle)

The 13th of December is the St Lucy’s day (Lucia) which is celebrated in Sweden and in other Scandinavian countries. Celebrating Lucia is always accompanied with eating delicious Swedish saffron buns called Lussekatter or Lussebullar, or even Saffransbullar. It almost always goes together with some hot mulled wine (called glögg, see our traditional recipe here) and gingerbread (pepparkakor).

Even though lussekatt is strongly related to the celebration of Lucia it is fairly common to eat it other days in December as well.

One of the challenges with baking lussekatt is to avoid making it too dry. There are plenty of recipes that claims to produce juicy saffron buns, many say that it is the use of quark that is the secret but it is not true. It is just clever marketing from the dominating brand for quark (Kesella) in Sweden who created this belief. There are a number of things you can do to make your Swedish saffron buns more juicy:

Make your Swedish saffron buns more juicy

• Don’t use too much flour (just enough to make the dough easy to work with, without beeing a sticky mess)
• Don’t use too much saffron since it dries out the dough, instead you can use less saffron but gain more taste by letting it soak in cognac for a few days (2 tbsp cognac to 1 g saffron). Another trick is to use whole saffron and grind it yourself.
• Take them out of the oven before they get brown as in the picture
• Place them close enough so they grow together in the oven (~1 cm space between)
• Let the raisins soak in rum or some other liquid of your choice
• Cover the buns immediately after it comes out of the oven
• Another way is to add a filling, like almond paste, vanilla, etc

Here you can find this recipe in swedish.

Recipe: Swedish saffron buns (lussekatt or lussebulle)

5 from 3 votes

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Prep Time 1 hr 30 mins

Cook Time 5 mins

Total Time 1 hr 35 mins

Course Dessert

Cuisine Swedish

Servings 16 buns

Ingredients

  

0.5x1x2x3x

• 100 g butter
• 250 ml milk
• ½ g saffron
• 1 tsp sugar
• 25 g fresh yeast for sweet dough
• 1 pinch salt
• 50 g sugar
• 25 ml water lukewarm
• 1 egg
• 425 g flour 800 ml
• 50 g raisins around 100 ml
• 1 egg for brushing over

Instructions

 

• Let the raisins soak in rum or some other liquid (at least 30 min)
• Melt the butter, pour in the milk and heat up to body temperature (37°C or 100°F)
• Grind the saffron with the teaspoon of sugar in a mortar and add to the milk
• Crumble the yeast into a separate bowl, add the pinch of salt, the sugar and the lukewarm water then stir it together
• Pour in the milk and add the egg while stirring it together
• Place all the above used ingredients in a stand mixer
• Add the flour gradually while stand mixer is stirring on low speed. You might need to add more flour to make it possible to work with the dough without it sticking to all of your fingers.
• Then add most of the raisins to the mixture but leave a few for decoration (32 raisins if you make 16 buns)
• Work the dough with the stand mixer (or by yourself if you don't have one)
• Cover the bowl and let the dough rise for 1 hour or a little more (up to 1½ hours)
• Heat up the oven to 260°C (500°F)
• Cover a baking tray with parchment paper
• Flour a working area and then knead the dough gently a few times
• Split the dough in 16 pieces and roll them to long thin strips that you then curl in an S-shape, but make a few extra circles to make them look better than in my picture 😉
• Place them on the baking tray with around 1 cm space between (we want them to grow together a little to keep them juicy)
• Place one raisin in each end of the bun and press it in so it does not stick out, but is still visible
• Place a kitchen towel over the tray and wait for 10 min before brushing them with a whisked egg
• Put the tray in the oven for roughly 4-6 min (watch them carefully since the size of the buns and your oven might change the required baking time. They should receive a light brown colour)
• As soon as you take them out, cover with a kitchen towel and let them cool down

Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!

Bon appétit! Check out some of our other sweet recipes and Christmas recipes.

An alternative to gingerbread cookies or saffron buns for Lucia is the Swedish soft gingerbread cake

More Swedish recipes from IngredientMatcher here