Swedish Love Affair

What is it about Swedish sweets?  We used to live near the Swedish Bakery in Andersonville, our little Swedish (and lesbian) enclave in Chicago, and adored what they could do with marzipan.  It was a treat to go there and choose a box full of goodies for any celebration.  Now we have to make do with IKEA, and that's not a bad compromise, though there is a lot less choice.  And so, tonight, we nibbled on three of our favorites:  the oval, frosted almond tarts; the chocolate-coconut balls (oddly listing rapeseed as the first ingredient?!); and the apricot-marzipan covered, chocolate dipped, artificial arrack rolls (punschrullar).  It was the first time we'd purchased these sweets in their original packaging, as opposed to in the repackaged IKEA container; the first two are made by Delicato, the last by Hagges Finbageri. 

But what is arrack?  Get this:  it's an Indian liqueur and our internet research seems to indicate that the Swedes first began importing it in the 18th century through their Swedish East India Company (did everyone have one of those?).  It's made from either coconut or cashews and was traditionally made into punch, hence the Swedish name of the candy, punschrullar.  The word punch is even Hindi-derived, for 5 ingredients, I guess how many these hot or cold drinks had.    We had always thought it tasted alcoholic, but not obviously brandy or rum.  Ooooh, it's good.  (I could tell you more of what we found, the history of modern Sweden from the  Swedish Empire of the 17th century through the 30 years war all the way down to its supposed neutrality in WWII).

I hope IKEA stays open--and with their decrease in hours, complete lack of floor staff, and rarely fully-stocked store, it doesn't look great--because I don't think I can make any of these Swedish treats on my own.  And I won't be going back ot Chicago anytime soon . . . 

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By the way, I thought my all-time favorite candy, the Anton Berg Plum-in-Madeira confections (which I first had working with a Danish man at a picture library in NYC), were Swedish.  Apologies, they are Belgian.  And divine.  The other flavors are pretty good too.