Konditorei Caredda

The shop with the wedding cakes in the window

Paolo Caredda comes from a line of Neapolitan confectioners stretching back seven generations, and the pastry shop that carries his name at Josefstrasse 119 in Zurich has been open since 1998. Zurich Tourism lists it with a line that says everything a local needs: "Der mit den Hochzeitstorten im Schaufenster", the one with the wedding cakes in the window. Examples of its wedding cakes are on show there, wedding cakes are the house's specialty area, and next to them sit a café with lunch menus and, in summer, homemade gelato.

A family shop that has made its name on wedding cakes and still sells you a cornetto and a cappuccino at 7 am is a favorite of ours. If you are planning from abroad, it means the cake comes from a working pastry kitchen with a daily counter rather than a studio that opens by appointment.

A three-step cake builder and a two-day lead time

The English version of the site is built around a cake builder in three steps. You choose the occasion (a wedding is the first option), then a flavor, then decorations. The flavor list offers chocolate, vanilla and nut, plus a group of others: mocca, walnut, lemon, wild berries, zabaione, nougat and neutral cream. Decorations can be your own image, sugar roses or a personal signature. The builder returns an estimated price including VAT, so you can see a figure before you write, and for an exact one you contact the shop. On the English page the builder's field labels (such as Heirat for wedding) are still in German.

Once you agree with the estimate in principle, send a written enquiry with the red button, or phone the shop. Text for the cake, such as names, goes into the messages field of the form on the Cakes page, where you can also upload an image for the decoration. Every cake is freshly prepared for the person ordering it, with two days of lead time. That figure applies to cakes in general rather than to weddings in particular.

Collection and delivery are simple: you either pick the cake up at the shop yourself, or the shop sends it by taxi to your home address for an additional charge. Payment is in cash or by credit card, and all quotations include statutory VAT. Delivery to a venue and assembly on site are not mentioned.

A confectioner raised in Naples, trained in Zurich

The most distinctive thing about Caredda is the person behind it. Hellozurich's city-guide profile, which carries a byline, describes Paolo Caredda as a native of Naples from a long line of confectioners. As a teenager he was sent to Switzerland to learn the trade, and he learned from figures of the Zurich scene, among them a cake decorator at Sprüngli and the chocolatier Ewald Notter, and took part in confectionery competitions from Mexico to Jakarta.

The shop took over the premises of a Spanish grocery next door, started as a small café, and opened quietly in 1998 when barely ten people showed up. Business picked up about a year later. Paolo introduced Zurich to the cappuccino in cups he had made to his own design, his mother-in-law works in the shop and his brother and friends help in the bakery, and he works in the bakery twelve hours a day, seven days a week. He favors the traditional way of baking he knows from Ischia and Naples rather than trend products. A cake from a kitchen run that way carries the maker's own hand, which is the appeal of handing a wedding cake to a family business.

The pastry range around the cake

House specialties are aragoste, filo pastry with diplomat cream; sfogliatelle with a ricotta filling, candied oranges and cinnamon; rum baba; cannoli siciliani; amaretti with cherry cream, almonds and chocolate; mignons; cornetti; and pastiera. If your families come from different places, a plate of these beside the cake gives a guest from Naples or from Zurich something familiar.

The shop also runs a weekday take-away pasta menu, served Monday to Friday from 11 am to 7 pm. In November 2026 pasta costs CHF 14.50 to take away and CHF 16.50 at the table, with a choice of sauces and a daily special. It is a reminder that the premises are a working café as much as a cake workshop.

Open from 7 am, and a different kind of cake maker

Hours in November 2026 are Monday to Friday, 7 am to 7 pm, with slightly different Saturday and Sunday times, so check the weekend before a visit.

Compared with other cake makers on this site, Caredda is a different kind of choice. Törtlifee delivers chilled in its own refrigerated van across Switzerland and just over the border (read November 2026), while Caredda offers pickup or taxi delivery. Conditorei Stocker, also in Zurich, traces its family bakery back to 1904 and is in its fourth generation; Caredda's own history starts in 1998, though its founder's confectioner family goes back much further. For a couple who want a cake from an Italian pastry tradition, ordered through an English-language page from a shop they can walk into, Caredda fits that brief.