Elizabeth from Madison, WI (2017 Week 6: Botanical)

Baker

Elizabeth

Location

Madison, WI

Baking Challenge

3-tiered Floral Cake

Give your botanical creation a clever name – and tell us about your recipe.

Wisconsin Flower Basket. Hibiscus-lemon cake with lemon cream cheese frosting, decorated with crystallized edible flowers from the Dane County Farmer’s Market and fresh edible flowers from our family garden.

Any disasters? Did you take any risks? Proudest moment? Lessons learned the hard way? Tell us about it.

This whole cake was comprised of things I had never tried before: using flowers to flavor the cake, piping, candying flowers myself. And yet, everything went surprisingly smoothly. Proudest moment by far was succeeding at the basketweave piping around the sides of the cake. It looked exactly like I had pictured!

How did you add a Wisconsin twist to your flavors or decoration?

Local flowers were used for decoration, and powdered hibiscus flowers were used to tint the cake itself a deep purple in homage to the state flower, the wood violet.

How did you do?

Rocked it.