Known as semla, fastlagsbulle, fettisdagsbulle or hetvägg, depending on where in Sweden you live, an estimated 40 million of the cardamom-flavoured buns get eaten between Christmas and Easter.
Bakery sales peak on Shrove Tuesday, the last day before the Lenten fast (and while Swedes these days are too secular to pay much attention to the Christian holiday, they know how to eat cakes and pastries).
In Sweden, this day is called Fat Tuesday, or Fettisdagen.
The scrumptious bun does not require a lot of ingredients, but if you break down the six million semlor (as they're known in plural) eaten on Fat Tuesday alone, you get, according to Swedish newswire TT's calculation: 132 tonnes of almond paste, 211 tonnes of cream, 2.6 tonnes of cardamom, 211 tonnes of flour, 42 tonnes of butter, 2.6 million eggs, 53 tonnes of sugar and 1 tonne of icing sugar.
