Sunday 7 December 2008

The spoils of Zurich....

Regular readers will recall that last week I headed off to work in Zurich for a few days. While it was a work trip I managed to sneak in a little bit of shopping and here are the spoils:



Starting in the top left corner and heading clockwise there are piggy biscuit cutters, icing decorations, Swiss cake cookbooks (in German – I’m going to have to use an online translator!), a terrine mould, marzipan carrots, and hand carved wooden Christmas biscuit moulds.

The cookbooks are by the fantastically named Betty Bossi but a little internet research has revealed that this is not the name of a real person; Betty Bossi is apparently a “fictitious cook”.


I got very excited about the terrine mould as it’s longer and thinner than any I’d seen before. The sticker mentioned “Terrine Weissblech” and my mind filled with ideas of what that could be – maybe something delicious involving white chocolate? I’ve since found out that “weissblech” means tinplate - doh!

Marzipan carrots took up a lot of space in the cake decorating section of the store and, after reading one of my Swiss recipe books, I know why – the traditional Aargau carrot cake is decorated with them. If you want to see an Aargau carrot cake here it is, I made one!

Pigs seem to feature in many European countries’ Christmas traditions but not the UK’s. I couldn’t resist these though and wondered if it would be tasteless to use them on pork pies?


The star of the show, for me anyway, is the hand carved wooden biscuit moulds. Taking traditional Christmas images, each one was truly unique and I had to sort through the box to find the Father Christmas I wanted to come home with me!

4 comments:

glamah16 said...

Oh I love your finds. The german cookbooks shouldt be that difficult. You inspire me to get some on my trip over in a few weeks.

Anonymous said...

Dear Caked Crusader,
I decided at last to come out of lurkedom to tell you that you are truly wonderful. I would have done earlier, but was too busy baking. The 3R cake was an utter revelation, I ate nearly the whole glorious moist wonder myself.
I never baked before encountering your blog, as nothing EVER turned out right, but for some reason your recipes produce top results!! And I only found you because I looked at some gorgeous knits from your friend Soo!! Anyway, I cannot wait for the next installment, and since I am deeply indebted to you, I offer you my German translation skills for all German cake recipes to come.

Cakedly yours,
kathrin.loos@gmx.de

Anonymous said...

Hi, Betty Bossi is an old classic, though the name is fake, there was stilla real person behind it (she died a year ago or so).
Try the Mississippi cake!

Anonymous said...

I forgot - as cooking expressions are a bit different in Switzerland, Austira and Germany, online translation may not be perfect.