Norwegian Fastelavnsboller With Almond Filling

Fastelavn in Norway

Many cultures celebrate the days leading up to Lent with a big feast or celebration like Mardi Gras, Fastnacht, and Carnival. In Norway and other Nordic countries this is Fastelavn.

While the 40-day fast period of Lent largely lost significance in Norway after the Reformation, Norwegians have continued many of their Fastelavn traditions.

Norwegians now celebrate Fastelavn on the Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday before the start of Lent. Kids will dress up in costumes at school, and in some families children will “beat” their parents (or a piñata!) with Fastelavnsris, which are birch branches decorated with colorful feathers. In pre-Christian times the branches were used to reawaken fertile trees, animals, and women after the winter, and then later the fastelavnris symbolized atonement.

But the best part of Norwegian Fastelavn celebrations are the delicious Fastelavn buns, or fastelavnsboller in Norwegian.

And since this year Fastelavn is right before Valentine’s Day, you could even combine the two with some heart shaped fastelavnsboller.

Fastelavnsboller

There are many different versions of fastelavnsboller. Some are cardamom buns filled with a bit of marzipan or jam, while these days in cafés you’ll usually see fastelavnsboller filled with almond paste and lots of whipped cream, like the Swedish fastelavnsboller, or semlor.

While originally eaten on the Sunday before Lent, fastelavnsboller have become so popular that Norwegians now eat them from the end of December to March, and sometimes I’ll see them in cafés in Norway all year.

To make these I used Ingrid’s fastelavnsboller recipe from Den Rutete Kokeboken, published in 1980.

Before starting on the dough for the buns, I blanched the almonds to remove their skin. I did this by adding them to boiling water for exactly 60 seconds and then immediately rinsing them in cold water. After that it’s easy to slip the almonds out of their skin – just be careful to squeeze them down into a bowl so you don’t have almonds flying around your kitchen.

You can use ground cardamom for this recipe, but if you have a mortar and pestal I highly recommend grinding cardamom seeds instead, as freshly ground seeds are much more flavorful. I wouldn’t bother unless it really made a difference, but I swear it does.

Pre ground cardamom really doesn’t have much flavor, so if you do use it, I would probably double the amount of cardamom.

While it will be easier to make the dough if you have a mixer, I made it by hand and it really wasn’t too much work, as the dough is light and easy to knead. I kept the dough on the slightly wetter side, adding just enough flour so that it wasn’t too sticky.

These buns are delicious on their own as well, even without the almond and cream filling. And if you don’t like almonds, spread a little jam on them instead!

If you don’t have a food processor to make the marzipan filling you could use ready made almond paste or marzipan instead. You can soften it first with your hands, and then just add some milk or cream and a bit of the inside of each bun.

You can decide yourself how much of the insides of the buns you want to take out, depending on how much almond filling you like. Because you’re adding the insides of the bun to the almond filling, if you take out a lot you will dilute the almond filling with the bun crumbs, so if you want a stronger almond flavor I would make the holes more shallow.

I used a piping bag to add the cream here, but you can also simply spoon out the cream on top of the bun.

To be honest, I usually prefer fastelavnsboller without whipped cream – or with just a little bit of cream. Maybe this is because my mom never used whipped cream on our fastelavnsboller growing up. She simply filled hers with a bit of almond paste. But if you love whipped cream feel free to really pile it on!

If you want, you can use a heart shape cookie cutter to cut a heart out of the bun tops. Or you can use scissors to cut other shapes, or simply to clean up the circle shape.

You can switch the recipe from US measurements to metric by clicking from “US Customary” to “Metric” under Ingredients.