Solboller
Today, 21st January, is soldagen (the sun day) when the sun officially returns to Tromsø (for about 2mins over the mountains). It can be seen from the centre of town, on the top of the island and on the south shore. If the sun can’t be seen due to clouds then the celebrations are held off until the first clear sky.
Tromsø celebrates the return of the sun by leaving their schools, businesses or what ever they are doing to go out and watch the sun rise over the mountains. Kindergartens and schools sing songs to welcome the sun back. They often wear costumes or make papers suns.
An iconic symbol on this day is the ‘solbolle’ or sunbun. This is a yellow coloured sweet bread with a custard centre. This bolle is only found in the shops or at cafés in the few days leading to and after the return of the sun. However, it is much better making them yourself!:
Solboller
150-200g butter
500mls milk
100g fresh yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon of turmeric for colouring (optional)
150-200g sugar
1 kg wheat flour
thick custard
1 egg to glaze
icing sugar to dust
It also tastes good with a teaspoon of cardamum, but this is optional.
Method
Melt the butter. Add milk and heat to 37oC. (Any hotter than that the yeast will die.) Mix in the yeast. Mix the dry ingredients together and add in the milk mixture. Mix til a smooth dough.
Leave to rise in a warm place for 30 minutes.
Cut dough into 30 pieces and roll each into a round bun. Make a hollow in the centre for the custard. Put the buns on a cooking sheet, hollow up, and put a table spoon of custard in. Let the buns rise for another 30 minutes. Glaze the buns with beaten egg and bake them at 250oC for 8 minutes or until brown. Allow to cool and dust with icing sugar.
Happy sun-day!
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*drools* If only I had an oven…
Those look delightful! Thanks!
Just a quick note–you misplaced “sweat” for “sweet”. At least, I hope so! The former might not be so tasty. Heh.
Have a wonderful Sun Day!
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from L-Jay:
lol – thanks for the heads up 😉
I think this is a great event to celebrate!
These Solboller sound a lot like the Skoleboller that I used to enjoy when I lived in Norway.
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from L-Jay:
Yes, the only different is that solboller are coloured yellow with turmeric and skoleboller have white icing and cocoanut sprinkles.
Yummy, those skoleboller look great. Thanks for sharing the recipe. I love the photo of the return of the sun. I think I take the sun for granted living in Phoenix, Arizona. I love how the people of Tromso celebrate this time.
L-Jay: they look amazing!! Can’t wait to try this one out.
Your recipes are fab… I made kransekake over Christmas using your recipe and everybody absolutely loved it. =D
Well, if you have really good eggs, with very yellow yolks, the skoleboller look just like this! Here is a link to some I made: http://www.leftoverqueen.com/2009/05/25/recipe-skoleboller-or-norwegian-cardomom-and-custard-buns and no tumeric, if you can believe it!
Anyway, love the post! Thanks for sharing!
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from L-Jay:
To me skoleboller and solboller are basically the same (but don’t tell a Norwegian I said that!…lol) The eggs look really yellow – we don’t get that in Norway. I miss really rich egg yokes – brown eggs are hard to come by here. It seems like brown-egg-laying chickens don’t like the cold ;).
L-Jay and Moose,
This tradition is a riot! I love it, thanks for posting about it, and many happy returns of the sun to you.
Your blog is new to me, and I loved perusing it this week. I tried to send you an e-mail but can’t find an address. Would you mind giving me one? I am an American who moved to Norway by choice in 2006 and am researching before starting a blog about Norway for my friends, and am very inspired by you two!
Margrethe
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from L-Jay:
Vær så god!
We don’t actually give out our email. We have a contact form on the contact page which will send us a direct message.
Cheers
These look phenomenal! Living in a tropical country, I sort of take the sun for granted. It’s nice that there’s a special bun to commemorate it.