Cooking in Zurich: Desserts, Cakes, and Baked Goods

Here are some of the desserts, birthday cakes and breads I have made:

A friends daughter was turning 2 and loves Peppa Pig, so I made this out of a 10 inch round pan. I drew a stencil on a piece of paper and then carved the cake into the shape. I used marzipan (found in rolls at Coop or Migros) for the eyes and mouth/nose/cheek. I also used the rest of the white marzipan for the nose and covered it with the pink. I had a black cookie marker that I used for the pupils.

This is the 2nd one. The first I used a store bought cake mix to just try it to see if it would work.
I added a container of chocolate quark to it as I had heard that it would make it more moist. My husband said it didn't taste very chocolaty (I don't care for chocolate cake so didn't have an opinion). The icing is smoothed with an icing spatula and a little water.

Simple and fast 4th of July cake with white icing and icing gel pens

This is a watermelon pop. I used strawberry and lemon sorbet.
Cut up (or if you have mini chocolate chips, use them) chocolate pieces for the 'seeds'. Put about 1/2-3/4 of the way up in one of the 'freeze your own popsicle' things. Put another layer of lemon sorbet on top of that and then add some green food coloring to the remaining lemon sorbet for the 'rind'.
You will need to refreeze to set and then run some cold to room temperature water over it to loosen it.

This is Zopf Brot. I but the package of four at Migros or Coop along with the block of yeast. I will post the whole process later, but you can shape it however you wish (along with the traditional braided way). This one is a butterfly with raisin eyes. Sprinkled on top are the large pieces of sugar - also available in Coop. This is a lot of fun for kids to help with.

A hedgehog. Use scissors to cut the bread to make the spines.

This part is really for the cookies - they are sugar cookie bats cats, ghosts and dragons. you can find cookie cutters at this wonderful shop. The website is in English and German. Pick up is available in Zurich. They post items very fast and have all sorts of baking things.

Quick little birthday cake I made for my mom - I was trying out the store bought decorations. Consensus: the 'Happy Birthday' is on fondant and I didn't like it but the others are royal icing and quite yummy!

More of the decorations available. Coop and Migros have different ones. Royal icing is pretty easy to make but if you have no time, this is great. They are 2.50 chf a packet. The cupcake wrappers are from the previous link. A bit expensive, but worth it for a pretty cupcake for my mom

The smash cake I made for my son's first birthday. The steam is edible paper my wonderful MIL sent me as I couldn't find any here. The cargo is crumbled up oreos and m&ms. The cake was just sculpted from small rectangular trays. The m&ms are actually personalized with my son's picture and the date. Fun for a first birthday

This was the real cake - Pooh Bear Wilton cake pan. I can't ever get the black icing as dark as I want, but chocolate with a bit of black coloring added works best.

For my son's 2nd birthday, I made him a Thomas mountain cake. 10 inch, double 8 inch and a 6 inch for the top. I pre-made with royal icing the grass, some ducks (on the side) and trees. I used skewers to hold the cake layers in place (didn't have dowels). The 'rock slide' and tunnel entrances are made with the nestle chocolate morsels. He seemed happy.

Pumpkin sugar cookies. The small pumpkins in the dish I found at Sihlcity at Lolipop

I also made blue rice krispy treats in the shape of a train - the use of the Thomas train track made them look more train-ish. The cupcakes in the middle are the mini ones with sprinkles on top.

Summer mini fruit tarts. Made with raspberries, strawberries and blueberries in a mascarpone vanilla cream sauce topped with a mint leaf.

Breakfast muffins with egg, bacon, cheese, rosti, zucchini and red onion (and a few chives)

Banana Bread - optional: add chocolate chips to \\make it more of a dessert or special treat

Strawberry torte. I didn't do the whole process as I was unsure if it was going to turn out or not. Really easy though. I bought a plain torte from Coop (think it was a little over 2chf). Then I put 2 bags of frozen strawberries, along with 3/4 cup of water and 1/2 cup of sugar in a pan to boil. After it had cooked, I added a tbls of strawberry jam. Let it cool and then put on top of the tort. Slice fresh strawberries on top. Maybe sprinkle with powdered sugar or serve with whipped cream. Surprisingly quick, good, and easy.

Homemade peanut butter cups

These were for my youngest son's first birthday - a Hungry Caterpillar theme. They were a multi-purpose treat.
Ice-cream
Cupcake
Watermelon
I found the ice-cream cones at Real in Singen (Germany). They came 16 to a pack and have a chocolate inside. Yum! The cake is a strawberry cake with chocolate chips inside for the watermelon seeds. Just make your batter and then slightly push down the ice-cream cones into it and bake as directed. Simple and yummy.

This was the cake for another first birthday. I made the mistake of using a gel icing for the outline of the caterpillar, so it didn't freeze properly. This is a frozen buttercream transfer, my first attempt, and I think it came out pretty well.

Here is the side. The fruits are thin marzipan 'glued' on with icing. I found them at Real (store in Germany) as well. The dots are just the chocolate candy you can buy in the baking section of Coop.

These are the Churro recipe, however when making the Steak Pie, I had leftover dough so decided to make some Christmas Churros out of them. they came out pretty good and were very easy to make.

-Santa Claus
-Penguins
-Christmas Trees

These are called Chubby Hubby Rice Krispies Treats. I found this on a blob, via Pinterest and I love the site. It's called Brown Eyed Baker.

Basically, you make rice krispy treats like normal, but add crushed pretzels, peanut butter, pb chips, and chocolate. I used the chocolate cubes from Coop, and they actually melted very well. Instead of layering chocolate over the top though, I melted 1/2 of the bag and mixed the other half in with the treats. Then I just drizzled it on top. \

Hubby was thrilled - until I told him the name :-)
Here's the link to the actual recipe