Pretty Packages

his week I have been really spoilt because I've gotten two lovely packages in the mail!

One was from my sweet friend Sofia, and the other was from my mum, they both contained lots of cute little pressies, hooray!

From Sofia I got this cute magnet, and my favourite - Mr. Huggie!

My mum sent me this cool jay cloth, some craft ribbons and a roll of Easter-themed ribbon.

This ribbon goes on the end of a shelf, so cute!

My New Blog!

The LondonSwedes (LondonSvenskar) website is now live! I think it looks great, the team did a wicked job!

My blog on the site is called "Lisa's London", check it out here. And please write me a little comment, I've only got one so far! :) No but I would really appreciate a visit, and if you don't understand Swedish you can just look at the pics!

Swedish Semla Recipe

James has now eaten three of these beauties, and I have scoffed down four! They are seriously the best thing ever... here is the recipe:

Ingredients for 8 semlor (semla in plural is semlor):

50 g butter, melted

1 cup milk [2 dl]

50 g fresh yeast or 1 packet of dried yeast

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 cup sugar [1/2 dl]

1 egg

3-3,5 cups flour [7-8 dl]

Filling:

whipping cream

marzipan

icing sugar

Mix the milk, melted butter and egg in a bowl. In a separate bowl, mix yeast, sugar, salt and flour. Add the dry mix to the liquid mix a little bit at a time, while stirring (if you're using fresh yeast you have to heat the liquid to 37°c for the yeast to work properly). Take the dough out of the bowl and place on a floured table, the dough should be a little bit sticky but you should be able to knead it and make a smooth "ball". If it's to sticky, add a little more flour.

Now comes a really important bit, you want the dough to rise to about double size, to make the buns really fluffy. Place the dough back in the bowl and leave it covered with a tea towel for about 30 mins. I have noticed that when you use fresh yeast the dough rises up really nicely if you just leave it, but with dried yeast it sometimes doesn't. Since fresh yeast is really hard to find in the UK I now use this trick; place the bowl somewhere it can get a little heat from underneath, if your oven gets a little warm on top when it's on this is perfect (I don't mean that the hob should be turned on, just the warmth from the oven being on), or do what I do, place the bowl above a radiator, works like a charm!

When your dough is big and beautiful cut it into smaller parts and make round buns, don't make them too big! Leave them under the tea towel again for a further 20 mins.

Brush with whisked egg and bake them in the oven on 430°F [225°c ] until they are golden brown, around 15 mins.

When the buns have cooled down, stick a fork around the top of the whole bun to make a "lid". Scrape out some of the buns inside to make more room for the filling. The stuff you've just scraped out you can either put in the filling or just eat!

Whip the cream with a little icing sugar added, grate some marzipan on the largest "holes" and mix with the cream. I usually mix in a little bit of the inside of the buns too. I also put a little chunk of marzipan at the bottom of the bun as a bonus! Smooth the cream on the bun, place the lid on top and sprinkle with icing sugar. Voila!

If any non-Swedish peeps make these I would really love to hear how it went and if you liked them!

Share The Blog Love

Today I finished my blog buttons, yay! I made a cat in a hat, a rabbit with a balloon, and a cake.

What do you think guys? You can grab them from the sidebar, or if you want another size, click here. If anyone adds one of them, I would like to say a massive thank you in advance! :)

Happy Friday everyone!

Celebrating Women With Swedish Semla

Today is International Women's Day, woop woop for us women! But there is also a special Swedish day called "fettisdagen". On this day we eat a special bun called semla or fastlagsbulle. Because I live in the UK I realised I hadn't had a semla for years, and I really love them! So today I made some... they were just as good as I remember! James and I had them with coffee, he had never had a semla and absolutely loved it!

I will post the recipe shortly!

Afternoon Tea

Last weekend when my mum was here we had afternoon tea at The Orangery at Kensington Palace, fancy!

It's a really beautiful place, the white decorated walls and ceiling are amazing!

On the table there was a small orange tree.

This is what came with the tea; small sandwiches, scones and fabulous little cakes on top!

We ordered one of each tea "menu" so we got to try all the cakes...

But my absolute favourite was actually the scone with clotted cream and strawberry jam, divine!

Saturday Shopping and Frittata!

Hey everyone, hope you're having a great weekend so far!

This is what I have been up to today:

I finally used up my Zara vouchers I got as a xmas present when I bought this lovely blouse and skirt, hurry up now spring!

And I made these fun frittata cupcakes for lunch, delicious! I got the recipe from the lovely Cristie of "The Citybird's Nest", check out her blog!

Purple Hues

My new mug + the table cloth + the flowers my mum bought me makes a lovely purple breakfast table!

When Pigs Fly...

How cute is this little guy!? I bought this necklace when mum and I was at Spitalfield's last Sunday. It's from a company called "Lost Apostle", they had lots of really charming pendants for necklaces and bracelets.

LondonSwedes Header

Hello! I haven't blogged for a few days because my mum has been here to visit me! It was so fun, we had lots of nice food and went shopping at markets and Oxford Street. I will show some pics later!

But firstly, here is my new header for the Swedish website "LondonSvenskar". My blog there is called "Lisa's London" (it's in Swedish though, that's why there's no apostrophe in "Lisas")

What do you think?

Here's a close up of the illustrated version of me: