Judith Erdin (34) takes the chilled Mailänderli from the grill, sniffs, bites, chews and nods with satisfaction. This is the first try – more trials will take place before posting the recipe and its official back blog on Streusel.ch. Mailänderli, the most popular Christmas cookie in Switzerland, is a special case: the dough is one of the basic doughs and has a fixed composition. Judith Erdin adds a personal touch with the amount of lemon zest or cooking time.
The biscuit belongs to the Advent season, as does the spinach of the comic book character Popeye. We cook, snack and lick with the kids, friends and neighbors. The adults always warn the children not to take the raw dough into their mouths and push the trays into the oven together. Watching the clock, they work faster to complete the ambitious program and clear the table of sticky, sugary sauces after cutting Brunsli. The Christmas cookies are then split, boxed, distributed and of course eaten in large quantities.
a sting every day
At Judith Erdin’s, the oven doesn’t just get hot in December. The educated baker-confectioner and liar opened his blog in 2016. Here she publishes recipes for homemade baked goods from scratch.
At the beginning of 2020, she combined her two specialties, bakery and graphic design, her dream job. She says: “Since then, every day I wake up feeling as nervous as I did when I was a kid on an Easter morning when I knew I could call home right away.”
She has been working independently for almost three years as a recipe writer, blogger and baking course instructor in Aarau, Winterthur and Zurich. She shoots and edits bread, confectionery or cake photos and publishes them on her website and social media. She gets support from her family for the video shoot. To the publisher’s delight, he designed two award-winning books, “Your Best Bread” and “Your Best Desserts”.
His blog took advantage of the back trend
The pandemic was a fluke for the Fricktal native: access to Streusel.ch nearly doubled overnight. So many people wanted to bake bread that yeast became scarce in Switzerland during and after the quarantine.
In her bright apartment in Freienwil AG, which she shares with boyfriend Markus Muoth (38), the dining table in front of the kitchenette is the centerpiece of her business. He turns a crank and extends the table legs until the chrome steel plate is at a good working height.
He always strives for the same goal when developing recipes: “It should taste just like your favorite baked goods – but made from scratch and without additives or E-numbers.”
Bear claw fans convinced
She’s happy to take on the challenge of developing her own believable recipe for her friends’ favorite baked goods. It took about eight trials and tweaks before Judith Erdin was satisfied with her bear claw recipe and even her boyfriend discovered that the homemade ones tasted better than the ones bought at Migros.
It can be thought that Judith Erdin is not satisfied with sweets. But after a year of producing sweet pastries for her second book, she needed a break. She says today: “I don’t have to eat dessert every day. But when I do that, I want a really good product, not just mediocre.”