Why Sweden gave the cinnamon bun its own day

Kanelbullens dag falls on 4 October, and it was made up in 1999 by a marketing organisation.

I am not saying that to spoil it. It is the most successful food day Sweden has, and knowing where it came from makes it more interesting rather than less.

Who invented it

Hembakningsrådet (the Home Baking Council) was founded in 1959 by companies with an obvious stake in the outcome: producers of yeast, flour, sugar and margarine. Its purpose was to get Swedes baking at home, on the reasonable theory that Swedes who bake at home buy flour. It is run today by a sugar company.

In 1999 the council turned forty. Kaeth Gardestedt, who managed projects there, proposed a day for the kanelbulle to mark the anniversary. She chose 4 October because early autumn was conspicuously unclaimed. Crayfish, goose and surströmming (fermented herring) already had their moment, apple festivals had theirs, and nothing was competing for the first week of October.

Her original idea had a second half that did not survive. She wanted it to be a day of omtanke (consideration), and hoped bakeries would give the day's takings to charity. Almost nobody does.

The first half survived completely. The day entered the Swedish almanac in 2004, five years after a trade body wrote it down.

The bun is younger than you think

In its modern form the kanelbulle dates from around 1920, once the shortages of the First World War lifted and butter, wheat flour, sugar and cinnamon were affordable again. Affordable is doing some work in that sentence. Through the twenties it was still a luxury. Baking them at home on an ordinary Tuesday only became normal in the early 1950s.

So the tradition that a marketing council decided to formalise in 1999 was, at that point, about fifty years old in any real domestic sense. The day is not a fake attached to something ancient. It is a fairly new thing attached to a fairly new thing, and it worked anyway.

What is actually in one

Cardamom. This surprises people who expect a bun called a cinnamon bun to be a bun with cinnamon in it.

Cinnamon goes in the filling, with butter and sugar. The dough underneath is a cardamom dough, and it is what makes a Swedish cinnamon bun taste Swedish rather than like a cinnamon scroll. When the Swedish bakers' association reports on what the trade gets through on 4 October, cardamom is on the list in the thousands of kilos alongside the cinnamon.

Pearl sugar on top. Sometimes flaked almonds. No icing, no cream cheese, nothing poured over it.

Where the day actually happens

Mostly at work. The bakers' association surveys the day each year and reports that a large share of the buns eaten are paid for by somebody's employer, which matches what the day looks like in practice: a tray arriving in an office at three o'clock.

Those numbers come from an industry that benefits from the number being large, so I would not quote them to the decimal. The shape of the claim is right though. Kanelbullens dag is a workplace fika more than a domestic ritual, and it is the one day of the Swedish baking year that a whole country observes without anyone having to be told.

I bake kanelbullar on a sourdough base, which is not what a Swedish bakery does and is a decision with its own argument. Everything else about them on 4 October is the ordinary thing: twisted, heavy with cardamom, pearl sugar on top, eaten warm.