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RECIPE

How to make traditional Swedish blackberry pie

If you have lived in Sweden for a while, you may be aware that Swedes love berry picking. But if you don't want to wait for a Swede to whip up a blackberry pie ('björnbärspaj') for you, food writer John Duxbury shares his recipe with The Local.

Published: 13 February 2015 07:12 CET

How to make traditional Swedish blackberry pie

You can make individual or family-size blackberry pies. Photo: Shutterstock

The pastry uses melted butter which gives it a really luxurious taste, almost like Scottish shortbread, and yet it is so easy to make and doesn't even need to be blind baked. The almonds bring out the flavour of the blackberries, but only need to be sprinkled on to the pastry. It really is easy-peasy!

Summary

Serves: 6-8

Preparation: 20 minutes

Cooking: 25 minutes

Total: 45 minutes

Ingredients

Pastry

175g (6oz) butter

180g (1 ¼ cup) plain flour

100g (½ cup) caster sugar

½ tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

Filling

50g (2 oz) ground almonds

450g (1 lb) blackberries

90g (½ cup) caster sugar

1 tbsp potato flour on corn flour

Glaze

3 tbsp red currant jelly (or any other seedless red jam)

Method

1. Melt the butter for the pastry. Leave for a few minutes to cool.

2. Lightly grease a 23cm (9in) pie dish.

3. Pre-heat the oven to 200C (400F, Gas 6, Fan 180C).

4. Mix the plain flour, caster sugar, baking powder and salt. Gradually beat in the melted butter until you have an evenly coloured pastry dough.

5. Line the pie dish with the pastry. Just gradually push it out with your fingers as it is too buttery to roll out.

6. Spread the ground almonds over the pastry.

7. Mix the blackberries, caster sugar and potato/corn flour in a bowl and then spoon over the top of the ground almonds.

8. Bake for about 20 minutes until the pastry is golden brown. Leave to cool for ten minutes or so.

9. Make a glaze by heating the red currant jelly in a saucepan and simmering for two minutes. Glaze the blackberries using a pastry brush.

10. Serve with vanilla sauce or extra cooked blackberries (see below).

11. Put 50g (2 oz) sugar, a star anise and the zest of half a lemon in a saucepan with 100ml (½ cup) water. Bring to the boil and simmer for 2 minutes until slightly syrupy. Add 450g (1 lb) blackberries and stir. Leave to cool.

OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

The Local’s guide to tipping in Sweden is clear: tip for good service if you want to, but don’t feel the pressure: where servers in the US, for instance, rely on tips to live, waiters in Sweden have collectively bargained salaries with long vacations and generous benefits.

SEE ALSO: What’s the tipping etiquette in Sweden?

But there are signs that this is changing, and the change is being accelerated by card machines. Now, many machines offer three preset gratuity percentages, usually starting with five percent and going up to fifteen or twenty. Previously they just asked the customer to fill in the total amount they wanted to pay.

This subtle change to a user interface sends a not-so-subtle message to customers: that tipping is expected and that most people are probably doing it. The button for not tipping is either a large-lettered ‘No Tip’ or a more subtle ‘Fortsätt’ or ‘Continue’ (it turns out you can continue without selecting a tip amount, but it’s not immediately clear to the user).

I’ll confess, when I was first presented with this I was mildly irked: I usually tip if I’ve had table service, but waiting staff are treated as professionals and paid properly, guaranteed by deals with unions; menu prices are correspondingly high. The tip was a genuine token of appreciation.

But when I tweeted something to this effect (a tweet that went strangely viral), the responses I got made me think. Many people pointed out that the restaurant trade in Sweden is under enormous pressure, with rising costs, the after-effects of Covid and difficulties recruiting. And as Sweden has become more cosmopolitain, adding ten percent to the bill comes naturally to many.

Boulebar, a restaurant and bar chain with branches around Sweden and Denmark, had a longstanding policy of not accepting tips at all, reasoning that they were outdated and put diners in an uncomfortable position. But in 2021 CEO Henrik Kruse decided to change tack:

“It was a purely financial decision. We were under pressure due to Covid, and we had to keep wages down, so bringing back tips was the solution,” he said, adding that he has a collective agreement and staff also get a union bargained salary, before tips.

Yet for Kruse the new machines, with their pre-set tipping percentages, take things too far:

“We don’t use it, because it makes it even clearer that you’re asking for money. The guest should feel free not to tip. It’s more important for us that the guest feels free to tell people they’re satisfied.”

But for those restaurants that have adopted the new interfaces, the effect has been dramatic. Card processing company Kassacentralen, which was one of the first to launch this feature in Sweden, told Svenska Dagbladet this week that the feature had led to tips for the average establishment doubling, with some places seeing them rise six-fold.

Even unions are relaxed about tipping these days, perhaps understanding that they’re a significant extra income for their members. Union representatives have often in the past spoken out against tipping, arguing that the practice is demeaning to staff and that tips were spread unevenly, with staff in cafés or fast food joints getting nothing at all. But when I called the Swedish Hotel and Restaurant Union (HRF), a spokesman said that the union had no view on the practice, and it was a matter for staff, business owners and customers to decide.

So is tipping now expected in Sweden? The old advice probably still stands; waiters are still not as reliant on tips as staff in many other countries, so a lavish tip is not necessary. But as Swedes start to tip more generously, you might stick out if you leave nothing at all.

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