Semla Cake For Roger's Birthday

And it's time for semlas once again, yay! This year, I wanted to make mini-semlas and take into work, but as it's my brother-in-law Roger's birthday, I decided to make a semla cake as well and take along to the celebrations. I decided to use the the recipe from 2014 for the buns. A mixture of equal parts of plain and super strong flour worked splendidly.

I've heard of semla cakes, so I did some searching on the internet, but the ones I found were all basically a cake-sized bun done up like a semla. I didn't like the look of them and I guessed they'd take forever to bake. Instead I opted to do regular sized semlas but baked together in a circle.

I made the buns on the day before. For the cake, I took out 8 pieces of dough, to make the regular sized semlas. The remainder I turned into 40 mini-semla buns. I shaped the 8 pieces into balls and placed in a round baking tin, lined with baking paper. They didn't touch originally, but after proofing they had grown to the grapefruit size and were stuck together.

After brushing generously with whisked egg, I baked them a bit longer than for individual semlas, to make sure the middle one got baked. Then I carefully cut the lids off the buns - it's quite tricky when they're stuck together. And I pinched out the middles.

I then prepared the filling with the crumbs, marzipan and milk and wrapped everything tightly with cling film and packed it, ready to go to Roger's birthday party.

Once at Roger's place, after dinner, I put together the semla cake, by distributing the filling

After that, I piped the whipped cream and put the lids on and dusted with icing sugar. No time to cut the lids into triangles and one of the lids had cracked in transport sadly. Needless to say, the cake disappeared incredibly quickly.

I'd also cut the lids off the mini-buns, but I didn't pinch out the middles. Instead, I made the filling from the mini-semlas of 2014. Marzipan and whipping cream (but not whipped).

On Tuesday morning, I got up early and spread a little of the marzipan filling on each mini-bun, piped a rose of whipped cream over it and put the lids on. No time for breakfast, but straight in to work. Again, these turned out to be a great success and several people had seconds. My manager even came over to my desk three times for a mini-semla. One colleague tried to resist having one, claiming to be on a diet, but caved in on the Wednesday and was wondering if there were any semlas left. But semlas are for Shrove Tuesday only, so he'll have to wait to next year now...