It’s okay if you forgot to order king cake again. Mardi Gras always seems to sneak up on you (lunar holidays like Easter always move around on the calendar), but you can still make something festive to celebrate. If you’re like me and love almond paste and whipped cream, the Swedish semla bun is your new official snack this time of year. Here are two ways to make your own semla: the scratch method and the cheater’s method.

Mardi Gras, also known as Shrove Tuesday, Lent, or Pancake Day, is tomorrow. In the Christian ethos, it’s the day before Lent, which precedes Easter. This is a time when people forgo indulgences, and historically that can include things like cream, butter, and sugar. So instead of wasting them, people would throw them all together in a recipe to make rich cakes, breads, and pancakes. Today, we have more efficient storage methods, but it’s still fun to celebrate the holiday with traditional dishes.

Swedish semlor buns (singular "semla") are bread buns enriched with butter and eggs. The finished bread is then hollowed out and the cavity is filled with a sweet almond paste. It is topped off with whipped cream and the small bread lid is returned to cover the airy mound. Although it sounds like a dessert, I find that semlor is not overly sweet. For me, this bread is more suitable for breakfast with a hot cup of coffee or tea, but you can eat it whenever you want.

I started with a Semlor recipe from Fika: The Art of The Swedish Coffee Break and made some adjustments. It's a pretty typical bread recipe. Bloom the instant yeast in warm milk. Add melted butter, an egg, sugar, flour, baking powder, salt, and ground cardamom seeds. I made an adjustment here too: I think you might not have whole cardamom seeds, so the amount of cardamom powder is included in the recipe. It gives the dough just as nice a smell, but you don't get the bits spread out in your dough in the same way.