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Baker makes Swedish Lucia buns using her own breast milk

Breast milk is not usually an ingredient in Swedish Lucia saffron buns. But one food blogger has gone viral after she made and ate the traditional pastries using her own milk.

Published: 13 December 2016 11:44 CET

Baker makes Swedish Lucia buns using her own breast milk

Jennifer Barmer and the Lucia buns before they went into the oven. The white cream is butter icing. Photo: Private

“It was my husband who had the idea,” Jennifer Barmer, who runs the vegan food blog Living Green together with him, told The Local. “He has several friends who have baked using breast milk.”

Swedes gorge on saffron buns – called lussekatter or lussebullar – every year on and around December 13th, the day the saint Lucia is celebrated across the Nordic country.

So Barmer spent a few days collecting the spare milk left over from breastfeeding her young baby before she baked a batch of the buns a couple of days ahead of Lucia.

“They turned out great. If I hadn't known it was breast milk I would just have thought they were ordinary Lucia buns with a bit more sugar than usual,” she said.

READ ALSO: Six things not to tell a Swede on Lucia day

While Sweden has a reputation for being tolerant and family friendly, the subject of breastfeeding has been hotly debated in recent years. Add to the equation that breast milk Lucia buns are not particularly common, and Barmer's twist on the recipe quickly went viral.

The former contestant of TV baking competition Hela Sverige Bakar (based on The Great British Bake Off) said the reactions have been both positive and negative.

“Many women have said that they've also used breast milk to make for example pancakes, but have not dared to say anything. Sometimes someone has to be the first one to say it for others to dare admit it too. It shows how shameful breast milk is still considered to be.”

“Others have said things like 'yuck', 'disgusting', 'breast milk is for babies'. And these are people who drink a different kind of breast milk, from the cow, on a daily basis,” she added.

If you want to make breast milk-based Lucia buns yourself, Barmer suggests using the same amount of milk as normal, but slightly less sugar than the recipe states – unless you prefer sweeter buns.

For the less brave among you, here's a recipe for cow's milk-based Lucia buns.

READ ALSO: Swedish racer defends eating her own horse

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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