If Austria were a cake...

... what would it taste like? And what would it look like?

The return of a friend and colleague of ours back to her homeland, little Liechtenstein, offered the perfect occasion to try our baking and decorating skills on an Austria-shaped cake.

For a more-dimensional effect we started by producing 3 layers of sponge, for two of which we added red food colouring to the batter. We piled the layers atop each other, held together by raspberry jam. The cross section now had the colours of the Austrian flag: red-white-red. Perfect.

Next, we used a sugary food pen to draw the outer borders - a tricky endeavour that made us realise how poor our geographical knowledge actually was: we had to modify and correct a few times. Getting the borders between the individual districts right was a bit easier - even though Styria ended up bigger and rounder than it actually is. Well...

Finally we used coloured icing and sugar pens for filling in the blanks, with a more meaningful touch on some districts than on others.

Et voilà, behold the product:

with the layering visible

Birds-eye view

Only one of many Kristy&Mo cake productions. It won't be the last either.