Swedish Saffron Bread

During the 1990-1991 school year, I had an exchange student from Umea, Sweden. It was a great year and we exchanged a lot of ideas, traditions, etc.

Just before Christmas she made Saffron bread, or as I reacently found out, it's also called lussekatter.

2 years later I flew to Sweden to spend Christmas with her and her family. I got to have this wonderful Saffron Bread again - and that's the last time!

Something came over me today and I decided I wanted to make the Saffron bread, there were many recipes on the internet, but I couldn't decide which one to try, so what else to do but email my student's mother and ask her for the recipe. She sent it right back. It was in Swedish, but I knew it would be. I found a great Swedish to English translater at Google, and after copying the recipe to a word document, I was able to upload that document and it came back instantly, translated into English. The ingredient measurements were still in the metric system, so I found a metric kitchen converter, said a litle prayer, and started in. This came together so easily, and when the first batch came out, I wanted to scream with delight, they looked perfect, but I knew the true test was in the taste..I cold barely wait for them to start to cool down before I had to try one - Yes! That was exactly the taste I remembered! What fun!

Here's a picture of the finished product:



I think I just started a new tradition!