Baking Swedish with my children
In Sweden, the traditions are already around you. In Melbourne, I have to put them on the kitchen bench.
My children are growing up in Australia.
That means they do not automatically know why saffron suddenly appears in December, why cinnamon buns have their own day, or why a biscuit cutter shaped like a pig is completely normal at Christmas.
In Sweden, much of that knowledge is just there.
Here, I have to bake it.
Swedish makes more sense with flour on it
I could explain what kanelbullar are.
Or we can make them.
The second option works better.
Once there is dough on the bench, the Swedish words stop being vocabulary.
Bulle.
Kanel.
Kardemumma.
Pepparkaka.
They belong to something the children have rolled, cut, filled or eaten.
The dates work the same way.
Kanelbullens dag is much easier to remember when the kitchen smells of cinnamon.
Lucia makes more sense with saffron dough in front of you.
A tradition becomes less like a fact about another country and more like something your family actually does.
They do not need to look perfect
Baking with children is also a reliable cure for being precious about shape.
One biscuit is too thick.
One star is missing a point.
Somebody presses a cutter directly through the middle of the bit you were planning to use next.
That is fine.
Swedish baking was never preserved because every lussekatt looked identical.
It survived because people kept making it.
The slightly strange biscuit belongs on the tray too.
Melbourne changes the context, not the tradition
There are things my children will experience differently from children growing up in Sweden.
Lucia arrives in summer.
Christmas baking happens when it may be thirty degrees outside.
Some Swedish ingredients take more effort to find.
And sometimes I have to explain why we are doing something that would need no explanation at all in Gothenburg.
I actually like that part.
Having to explain a tradition makes you notice what matters in it.
Usually it is not perfection.
It is the repetition.
We make this every year.
We call it this.
This is how it smells.
This is what you do with the cutter.
This is the bit you are allowed to eat before the tray goes in.
That is enough.
The children may grow up a long way from Sweden.
But they will know what cardamom smells like.