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CINNAMON BUN DAY

FOOD AND DRINK

Cinnamon Bun Day: What’s it all about?

Swedes love their cinnamon buns so much they even gave the baked goods their own annual day - kanelbullens dag - offering sweet-toothed Swedes something special to celebrate. The Local finds out more.

Published: 4 October 2013 07:34 CEST
Cinnamon Bun Day: What's it all about?

Every year on October 4th, the Swedes celebrate Cinnamon Bun Day. Cafes, restaurants, and convenience stores across the country sell the spiced Swedish buns.

The holiday was invented in 1999 by the Home Baking Council (Hembakningsrådet), a club of baking ingredient producers now run by Danish sugar company Dansukker. The company wanted to create a baking tradition in honour of its 40th anniversary.

“We wanted to celebrate home-baking,” Birgit Nilsson Bergström, project manager at the Home Baking Council, told The Local. “So we talked with various bakers, teachers, and just all sorts of ordinary people, and we asked what bread they thought of when they thought of home-baking. And that was it.”

The cinnamon bun itself has been a beloved pastry in Sweden since the 1920s. Money was tight during World War I, and it wasn’t until after the war that many Swedish households could afford to splurge on the ingredients.

The Swedish cinnamon bun is much less sticky and sweet than the typical American cinnamon roll. Another essential difference in Swedish cinnamon buns is the cardamom spice in the dough, which adds another dimension of flavour.

The buns are baked for just a few minutes in a very hot oven, making them light and fluffy with a golden brown surface. They are then topped with grains of “pearl sugar” as opposed to frosting or glaze.

Nowadays cinnamon rolls can be found around the world, but in Sweden they’ve got that extra something – a touch of Scandinavian simplicity.

“We’re experts at fika,” Bergström said with a laugh. “Our Swedish cinnamon rolls are simpler, more every-day, and yet tastier. They have less fat, less sugar… They’re more plain, but still festive for us, and very Swedish.”

IN PICTURES: As Swedish as cinnamon rolls? ‘Swedish’ cuisine unmasked

For Bergström, the bun-baking bonanza begins the night before the big day.

“I’m going to put the first batch of dough in the fridge tonight,” she told The Local on Thursday afternoon.

“I’ll bake it early in the morning, and invite over all of my neighbours in the apartment. If they’re not home I’ll leave a bag of buns outside the door.”

During the evening Bergström will be meeting for a celebration at a local cafe in Gothenburg. Participants will talk about buns and Sweden’s fika culture, and of course feast on the cinnamon concoctions. The Home Baking Council will also announce the winners of its contest to redesign the form of the cinnamon bun.

“The taste is perfect,” said Bergström. “There’s no need to change that. But it’d be fun to have a new design now and then. The pictures of the winning designs will be released next week.”

Cinnamon buns are not the only food so impeccably Swedish that they are celebrated in Sweden with their very own day. Fat Tuesday is irrevocably associated with semlor, and Waffle Day is always March 25th.

But here at The Local we wondered – how many of these Swedish “traditional” foods actually have their origins in Sweden? We did some sleuthing and found out. Even two of the key ingredients in the beloved cinnamon buns have travelled a long way to get here… Check out the gallery where we reveal the true origins of seven popular Swedish foods.

The Local/Solveig Rundquist

Follow Solveig on Twitter

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FOOD AND DRINK

OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

Should you tip in Sweden? Habits are changing fast thanks to new technology and a hard-pressed restaurant trade, writes James Savage.

Published: 5 April 2024 13:59 CEST
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. 

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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