Retrospective
Greetings fellow cheese-lovers,
It’s Helvetic Kitchen’s five year anniversary!
Since August 2015, I’ve posted 314 recipes of all kinds—and not just cheesy and chocolatey ones.
There were the strange (a salad made of lemons), the unexpectedly delicious (mashed potatoes with pears), the difficult recipes that seem easy (Rösti, my nemesis. It took me ages to get it just right (hot tip, the secret ingredient is patience)), and the easy recipes that seem difficult (ham wrapped in braided bread dough).
There were recipes that had been around for centuries (like these Christmassy deviled eggs), and those ones that I adapted using Swiss favourites (cake with Rivella or chicken wings covered in Paprika chips) and there was this one that was originally meant for bear meat.
I just want to take this opportunity to say thank you for reading. Thank you for making my recipes, for sending feedback, and for telling me all about your Swiss culinary adventures.
I appreciate you being patient about typos, missing text, and vague or imprecise recipe instructions.
Thanks for all the nice things you’ve said! I’m glad that some of my recipes could remind you of what your Grosi made, or what you ate when you worked here as an Au Pair, or helped you make something that tasted like your Swiss sweetheart’s childhood.
I’ve mentioned some above, but now I want to share some more post highlights—my most popular posts, my personal favourites, the ones that took the most work, and the ones that my family asks me to make over and over again.
Here’s the post that started it all, my grandmother’s recipe for carrot cake:
Rüeblitorte
My most-read posts are classics of Swiss cuisine, mostly what you would expect from a Swiss recipe blog.
I wish I had the time to make Zuger Kirschtortes every week, but sadly I don’t. Some recipes, however, have made it into the rotation and grace our kitchen table quite often. These are my favourite easy standards.
Sweetheart Sam has his own list of favourites:
And my munchkin too—if she could choose, she might eat my pumpkin Älplermagronen every day of the week:
A few posts were time and labour intensive. The pine cone cake meant spending a whole afternoon arranging slivered almonds. The Chügelipastete had me build a dome from puff pastry and source sweetbreads, and the Baumkuchen meant painting layers and layers of batter and jam to create a tall cake covered in chocolate and resembling a tree trunk.
And of course there was the series of posts featuring the entire Wildteller, my favourite autumn meal.
Of course a big thank you to my two guest post writers, my intrepid husband Sam (who is still obsessed with sloes) and Friedrich (whose Äntlibuecher Kafi consumption has remained steady since his post).
And, for the future?
I still have plenty of recipes to tackle. Stay tuned for Nidelkuchen (I did it! It’s here!), one that we have been trying to get right since 2011, long before I had even dreamed of the blog, and something called drunken spaghetti which involves the use of a fondue pot and a LOT of cheese.
Thanks again for reading!
PS. and thanks to the cheese-lover who let me know that this chicken chateau exists: Pouletburg
