Fika: The Art of The Swedish Coffee Break, with Recipes for Pastries, Breads, and Other Treats

Why is it that Swedish coffee is just
kaffe
, but coffee plus something to eat is
fika
? In Sweden the tradition of fika (pronounced “fee-ka”) is as common as breakfast; something almost everyone does at least once a day. It factors into travel planning, work schedules, and even a relaxed weekend at home. Life without fika is unthinkable.

Functioning as both a verb and a noun, the
concept of fika is simple. It is the moment that you take a break, often with a cup of coffee, but alternatively with tea, and find a baked good to pair with it. You can do it alone, you can do it with friends. You can do it at home, in a park, or at work. But the essential thing is that you do it, that you make time to take a break: that’s what fika is all about.

At its core, fika means “to drink coffee.” But the meaning goes much deeper. Fika represents an entire culture; it carries as much meaning for Swedish social engagements as it does for food customs. Fika is as indicative of a love of coffee as it is of a belief in maintaining tradition.

It’s uncertain exactly when the fika tradition started, but the use of the word was noted as early as 1913. Using a form of slang, the two syllables of the Swedish word for coffee—kaffe—were reversed, resulting in a word pronounced “fäka,” eventually evolving into today’s commonly used “fika.”

To have a real fika means using the classic recipes that everyone knows (what the Swedes call
klassiker
), either those from one of the Swedish cooking bibles like
Sju Sorters Kakor
(
Seven Kinds of Cookies
) or
Vår Kokbok
(
Our Cookbook
) or those passed down from one generation to the next. These classics are the baked goods so synonymous with fika that you can barely talk about coffee without getting an urge for one of them: cinnamon buns, the apple-rich
fyriskaka
, or even an open-face sandwich. They are the base recipes; the kind of culinary creations that many Swedes know by heart.

Eating is often emotional. It invokes a sentiment; we eat to celebrate, we eat to mourn. Separating food from how we feel about it is essentially impossible. Fika is the same; there’s a personal and emotional connection to it, no matter which recipe you choose. A cup of coffee and a piece of chocolaty
kladdkaka
, for example, feels comforting. It is, in its own way, grounding. Baking it in turn is a reassuring act, making you feel safe, sound, and taken care of—a staple in which you know exactly what you’re getting.

Whether they’re consumed at a café or baked at home, each recipe in this book creates its own ambience, a feeling or an emotion, that is attached to the food itself. Kladdkaka is what you throw together when you’re pulling an all-nighter in college, or when you have a friend coming over to discuss their latest love interest, or even cry about the last one. Semlor you only have in late winter and early spring, when the streets are still dark and cold and the warm lights of a good café are inviting.
Biskvier
you get at a nicer, more traditional café, or bake up for a special affair. It invokes something fancier, something worth celebrating.

That’s why fika is special; it fits into so many moments and seasons. You select what you eat for fika depending on what atmosphere you’re trying to create: one dish is perfect to celebrate a birthday, another might be better simply to have with afternoon coffee by yourself. After all, fika is just as good a reason for catching up with an old friend as it is for hosting a Christmas party. Fika can be done anytime, anywhere, and with anyone.

Although it may be well meaning, “Do you want to meet up and grab coffee?” in English just doesn’t carry the same weight as the corresponding Swedish question,
“Ska vi fika?
” “Should we fika?” is shorter, simpler; and every Swede knows exactly what it means: “Let’s take a break, spend some time together, slow down.” In fact, it doesn’t even have to insinuate coffee; fika is all-inclusive and can be done just as well with a pot of tea or a pitcher of fruit cordial. Fika isn’t just for having an afternoon pick-me-up; it’s for appreciating slow living.

Therefore, it’s not just because you bake a certain cake and serve a cup of coffee that you have fika. To truly fika requires a commitment to making time for a break in your day, the creation of a magical moment in the midst of the routine and the mundane. Fika is the time when everything else is put on hold. This book is intended to inspire you to do just that.

We both have Swedish backgrounds and thus have had the concept of fika ingrained in us from the beginning. As is typical in Swedish culture, both of our mothers regularly had something in the oven, be it a cake to
welcome friends coming for fika or their own bread for afternoon sandwiches. While neither of us is a professional baker, we have both baked a lot from an early age. Through the years we have baked the classics and developed a few of our own recipes, and now we’re collecting them all in this book.

For us, baking from scratch is simply the norm. We can’t trace all of this to our roots, but there’s something about baking and cooking with whole ingredients that feels inherently European: the appreciation for simple, good ingredients. You would be hard pressed to find any boxed baking mixes in a Swedish pantry.

The root of this book lies in the desire to make your own, and if you don’t make your own, it’s the desire to eat well: the feeling that when you can’t bake your own cinnamon rolls for fika, you know a good local bakery that can. Extraordinary baked goods come about not only because the bakers know what they’re doing but also because they are artists, paying
close attention to the ingredients and materials they use. They are crafting a work of art with passion and soul.

Sweden being a country of the North, butter, potatoes, and milk have always been in abundance, while more exotic ingredients are a much more recent addition to the Swedish pantry. Today’s Sweden, just like the rest of the Western world, has seen the influence of the supermarket and the variety of choice that it brings. And while you can get tomatoes year-round and processed foods are available like never before, there is still an inherent appreciation for good, wholesome ingredients in Swedish culture.