“Is Betty Bossi the Swiss answer to the American Betty Crocker?” I asked myself when I first encountered Betty Bossi products and recipes in a Swiss supermarket. I was pretty surprised when I learned that this was actually the case. “Not very creative”, I thought, “and also very similar”. Both Bettys are fictional characters, creations by resourceful companies. While the American Betty was invented to give responses to customer product questions a name (and face), the Swiss Betty was promoting the use of margarine through simple recipes. By now Betty Bossi has evolved into a successful Swiss imperium selling cookbooks and food products under that brand name which does not have much to do with margarine anymore …
Read more →Citrus fruits and I – that’s a love-hate relationship. Freshly squeezed orange juice makes my day, mandarin smoothie is a great snack in between, I love lime juice but I probably do not eat more than five oranges or mandarins as a whole per season …
Read more →What would Vienna be without Sachertorte, the Viennese chocolate cake? It belongs to the city the same way the white Lipizzan horses of the Spanish riding school, the Wiener Schnitzel or the Wiener Musikverein do.
The Original Sachertorte was first created in the traditional …
Read more →Scottish Shortbread – They are one of my favorite biscuits with their sandy texture. So far I always went for the store bought version (the red package with the kilt, basically the only one available here in Switzerland).
But I had to learn that shortbread is …
Sun, where are you? If I look through the window, I just see grey. Outside the wind is a constant companion and the temperatures are somewhere between one and 10 degrees centigrade, depending on the daily mood of our dear weather. But sun, where are you? You have been hiding behind a thick layer of grey clouds for weeks now. Because of you, it does not feel like spring. Even the plants struggle with this “spring”. And so do …
Read more →A few weeks back I realized that I had about a kilogram of white chocolate “sitting around”. They were left over ingredients from my advent calendar baking. One entire kilogram – I was …
Read more →Every country, every region seems to have its own variations of birthday traditions. To some people receiving birthday wishes before their actual birthday might mean bad luck, while to my granddad wishing a happy birthday the evening before spoke of good manners. It was a …
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