Today, 13th December, is St Lucia's Day. Traditionally on this day Swedes eat lussekatt as the day marks the start of Yule so I baked some last night.
Recently I've been getting interested in all the old (and I mean OLD) festivals that the church claimed as their own as they spread. Mainly as all these festivals are so tied in with our national culture and identity; think of Christmas and Easter and how they are our main holidays. Also the fact a lot of these festivals had certain foods associated with them that were used to mark the celebrations I find interesting too; think hot cross buns and Shrove Tuesday. This tied in with the non-Christian "dilemma" of celebrating Christmas has got me very interested in Yule. Yule was the old Northern European/Scandanavian way of celebrating mid-winter solstice, with a couple of weeks of feasting and partying as a way to endure the shortest and darkest days of the year. This became the 12 days of Christmas under the church. All that is just to explain no I didn't make them just because my surname sounds Scandanavian (as a work colleague asked).
This is the recipe I used though I used fresh yeast rather than dry active yeast. They went down well with my colleagues but my kids asked for toast for breakfast instead of them..
