Join pastry chef Emily Spurlin and photographer Laura Scherb for a restorative and inspiring weekend at Red Clover Ranch. Sunbaked is a collaborative retreat focused on storytelling through food and photos. Every summer, Nature offers her bounty to us, and as creatives, we felt called to create a space to respond to that in the form of art, both the edible and the visual. We know you will be just as captivated as we are by the breathtaking natural beauty and agricultural abundance of the Driftless region of Wisconsin.
Red Clover Ranch’s Chef Dani Lind will prepare seasonally-inspired meals, largely sourced from surrounding farms. Meals are included in the retreat cost.
All of our guest cabins feature easy access to our bathhouse with high end bathrooms, a screen porch with kitchenette, sauna, and outdoor shower
Low-ABV cocktails, beer, and wine available
Our Japanese- and Scandinavian-inspired bathhouse features two full bathrooms, an outdoor shower, and an electric sauna. It also houses a screened-in porch with a summer kitchen and a lounge area.
Instruction for making your own seasonally-inspired, naturally colored layer cake from Emily Spurlin
Instruction on capturing storytelling in photography—iPhone, DSLR camera, or sketchpad!— from Laura Scherb
Seminar on heritage grains from Halee of Meadowlark Organics
All baking tools, supplies, and ingredients to make your cake will be provided.
Excursions to farmers markets, antique stores, and nature walks to forage for flavor components
The nearest airports are Madison and La Crosse, Wisconsin. You can also fly in and drive from Minneapolis-St. Paul or Chicago, both about 3.5 hours away.
Please bring whatever you'll be using to photograph - film, digital, and phone photography all welcome!
We will arrive at Red Clover starting at 3pm on Thursday. Join us for late afternoon swimming, followed by a stop at a local antique shop. We will all gather for dinner and a bonfire to talk about our weekend ahead.
Sleep in or enjoy a morning nature walk to take photos and gather inspiration for your cake and photoshoot. We will then reconvene to learn about making jam to preserve the height of the season, followed by lunch. Halee from Meadowlark Organics will join us to talk about the beautiful grains they grown in the region, which we will then use to bake our cakes. After gathering for dinner, we have free time to go on a nature walk or enjoy the sauna.
After breakfast, we will make a field trip to the Viroqua farmer's market to gather ingredients, props, and inspiration for our baking and photoshoots. We will send the rest of the morning discussing color in regards to photography and also using natural ingredients as food coloring. The focus of the afternoon will be decorating our cakes, and setting up a photoshoot to capture our work.
For our final morning together, we will have breakfast together, pack up our goodies, and part ways - until next time!
