April 2021: BREADS AND CAKES FOR A SCANDINAVIAN COFFEE BREAK, CHAPTER 1

Eight months of blogging about food and cooking have passed and I find a dearth of recipes of baked sweets on my website. Prior to this month’s theme, The Kitchen Scholar has two entries on breads, both of which are savory pizzas, and only one cake entry that dates back to the website’s debut. To rectify this imbalance, April 2021 will grow a sweet tooth for breads and cakes with a sharper Scandinavian focus.

If there was one food-involved outdoor social activity that the COVID-19 pandemic had completely paralyzed from the previous year, it would probably be coffee breaks, and no other cultural region in continental Europe greatly compromised health and safety with physical distancing measures than Scandinavia with Sweden at its helm. Coffee breaks in Nordic nations are a daily ritual with a purpose. They bring a mandatory pause for self-contemplation, a spirited call to catch up with loved ones and friends, a necessary distraction from the fast paces of work for the sake of labor productivity, and an expressive appreciation of Scandinavian talents in the art of baking. Hence, sacrificing a normative pastime in exchange to a microscopic threat can be deeply heartbreaking and emotionally scarring to every Norwegian, Swede, Dane, Finn, or Icelander.

Although technology has provided a silver lining on modifying coffee break conversations with the use of video chats under the ongoing pandemic, the element of food is indispensable and mandates preservation even within the walls of home cooking. Baked sweets in a Scandinavian coffee break shine a new light in the middle of the present darkness by reminding us of our blessings and our constant search for joy against any manifestation of bitterness thrown in our lives.