Baking to Begin for Nordic Festival

California Lutheran University is gearing up for its 25th annual Scandinavian Festival in April, and officials said that next week pastry chefs will begin the task of preparing hundreds of pounds of Old World treats for the event.

The festival, to be held in Cal Lutheran’s Kingsmen Park, will feature living history lessons on the Vikings, folk dancing, concerts, lectures on Scandinavia and scores of food booths offering hot and cold dishes. The two-day weekend event runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on April 18 and from noon to 5 p.m. on April 19, said university spokeswoman Lynda Paige-Fulford.

Admission to the festival is $5 for adults and $1 for children under 10. A two-day adult pass is $7.

Tickets to the smorgasbord are $15 for adults, and $8 for children ages 6 to 12. Children under 5 enter free. The smorgasbord runs from 3 to 5 p.m. on April 18 and from noon to 2 p.m. on April 19. Reservations are recommended.

Pastry chefs will begin cooking traditional Scandinavian dessert food, such as lefse and krumkake, on Monday at a local Lutheran church, Paige-Fulford said. Lefse (pronounced LEF-sa) is a tortilla-like pastry that can be smothered with butter and sugar, and krumkake, (pronounced crumb-KA-KA), a finger-sized, cone-shaped, brittle cake.

On the day of the event, cooks will prepare hot dishes like Swedish meatballs, potato pancakes and ableskivers, which are a Nordic version of a doughnut hole.

For more information on the festival or to make smorgasbord reservations, call (805) 493-3151.