Santa Lucia Buns Recipe
Christmas wreaths can grace doors, walls, windows or even be hung horizontally and used as “chandelier” above the dining table! For this wreath, head to your backyard (or a friend’s!) and clip a bunch of different kinds of greens. Other things can be added - so look around at branches that might have berries, fun colors, dried and dead items from the garden, pinecones, etc.. If you’re unsure of what to mix and match, start with one kind of green; all cedar or all pine and get a feel for the assembly process. From there you can branch out and do another one with more things added in! I would challenge you to do it with items all scavenged and see what you can come up with! We’d love to see what you design, so be sure to send us a picture or tag us in a picture @kestrelrealtygroup! - Kathryn Church
Recipe
Ingredients:
(makes 60-70 so feel free to half the recipe!)
Ingredients:
10 oz (2.5) sticks butter
4 c. milk
3 packets (6 ¾ tsp) active dry yeast
1 gram pure saffron
1 ¾ c. sugar
2 eggs
½ tsp salt
12-13 c. flour
1 egg for brushing
Bake 5-6 min at 480°F
(this might seem like hardly any time, but these bake in a hurry and you do not want them to overbake!)
Instructions:
Melt butter in a pan, add milk and heat to 98.6°F
Stir in the yeast.
Grind the saffron with a mortar and pestle, adding some of the milk mix to create a loose paste.
Add saffron paste to the milk mixture.
Add sugar, salt, whisked eggs, and 7 c. of the flour. Stir.
Transfer the dough to a floured board and knead in the rest of the flour. Or use the dough hook on your mixer.
Cover and let rise in a greased bowl for 40 min.
Divide the dough into 6 pieces.
Take one piece at a time and cut it into 10 pieces. Roll each one of these like a snake about 10in long.
Shape into an “s” with a raisin placed at the center of the swirl.
Place on a greased or lined sheet, cover and let rise 30 min.
Brush with a beaten egg.
Bake for about 5-6 min. Do not overbake!
Recipe adapted from Swedish Christmas by Catarina Lundgren Astrom and Peter Astrom