Join pastry chef Emily Spurlin and photographer Laura Scherb for a restorative and inspiring retreat at Red Clover Ranch. During our time together, we will focus on infusing our creativity with a sense of time and place. With Emily, you’ll learn about local plants and flowers and how to incorporate them into your baking, how to translate inspiration into cake decoration, and a decoration intensive focused on piping skills, natural food coloring, and decorating with flowers. We'll utilize the increased surface area of a personal sheet cake to create a landscape (or cakescape, if you will). With Laura, you’ll explore photography in the natural world, capturing light, color, and designing a beautiful still life to photograph. There will be plenty of time for rest and recreation at the Ranch, which has a biodynamic swimming hole, and soak up the natural beauty 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.
Coffee and tea are on the house, and low-ABV cocktails, beer, and wine available for purchase
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 decorating your own seasonally-inspired, naturally colored cake from Emily Spurlin
Instruction on capturing storytelling in photography—iPhone or DSLR camera— from Laura Scherb
Seminar on local, heritage grains with a shortbread tasting.
All baking tools, supplies, and ingredients to decorate your cake will be provided.
Excursions to farmers markets, antique stores, and nature walks to forage for props and flavor/decor components
Enjoy a natural, biodynamic swimming hole
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 walk around the Ranch, then a cocktail/mocktail hour. We will all gather for dinner and a bonfire to talk about our weekend ahead.
Sleep in or enjoy a morning walk on your own. We'll head out on a foraging walk through the Ranch, then we'll meet for lunch. After lunch, we'll chat about heirloom grains and do a shortbread tasting to try each one. We'll spend the rest of the afternoon doing a lesson on color, then put together a golden hour living still life, then enjoy a beautiful dinner. After gathering for dinner, enjoy the sauna or a bonfire.
After breakfast, we will make a field trip to the Viroqua farmer's market. After lunch, the focus of the afternoon will be an advanced cake decorating workshop and a photo shoot to capture our work. We'll enjoy our last dinner together, then gather round the bonfire one last time.
For our final morning together, we will have breakfast together, pack up our goodies, and part ways - until next time!
