Tag Archives: food

Photography

Food Photography Workshop

July 20, 2012 – 12:31 am

If you enjoy read­ing my blog, you prob­a­bly know that I have pas­sion for both food and pho­tog­ra­phy. I’ve never learned about food pho­tog­ra­phy, all the pho­tos you see on my blog are just self-taught — went through many instances of trial-and-error to achieve the results. Read­ing the feed from my Twit­ter account, I learned about a food pho­tog­ra­phy work­shop hosted by Food Blog­gers of Canada with Jackie Con­nelly, a tal­ented pro­fes­sional food pho­tog­ra­pher. Before sign­ing up for the work­shop, I vis­ited her web­site, and I really love her style, colours, and com­po­si­tion. The pho­tos def­i­nitely spoke to me so I was very excited to par­tic­i­pate in the work­shop. The result? Super infor­ma­tive, use­ful tips, and a batch of nice photos.

We got to do a hands-on pho­tog­ra­phy work­shop and we could also asked for Jackie’s advice and tip when­ever we needed help. I remem­ber it was actu­ally rain­ing out­side that day and we were tak­ing pho­tos in the work­shop using only nat­ural light­ing — my favourite kind of light­ing for food pho­tog­ra­phy. After ask­ing for Jackie’s light­ing tips, the best light­ing was to my sur­prise, is on overcast/cloudy days.

Every­one at the work­shop took out their big DSLR and started snap­ping away. I find light­ing is the most tricky tech­ni­cal aspect to mas­ter in pho­tog­ra­phy, but I took with me some good advice such as using fillers and reflectors.

We were also free to style any food the way we like using the props avail­able to us. From these pho­tos, I did most of the styling for what I think looks yummy.

Who took a bite out of that cookie? Wasn’t me, but I helped with the crum­bling. Now I want to eat the rest of it.

Last but not least, more rasp­ber­ries. I loved the pat­tern of the plate so I decided to put sev­eral rasp­ber­ries on it to see if the colours would work well together. The photo turned out bet­ter than I expected. The nat­ural light­ing just worked very well with food. I am glad the pho­tos turned out so nice!

I know it is kind of late but I really appre­ci­ate that Food Blog­gers of Canada and Jackie hosted this work­shop, I learned many valu­able tips and tricks! I would cer­tainly rec­om­mend this work­shop if you like food pho­tog­ra­phy and would love to learn more.

Pho­tograph­ing food is so enjoy­able, almost bet­ter than eat­ing, almost.

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Baking Recipes

Cranberry Pistachio Biscotti

December 24, 2011 – 5:56 pm

It is that time of the year again, this recipe is one of my favourites. The colour is also per­fect for Christ­mas. It might be hard to find raw pis­ta­chio nuts so you can also sub­sti­tute with other nuts. I have tried mak­ing this recipe with almonds but my favourite is still pis­ta­chios (it might be a bit pricey but it is well worth it). I have illus­trated this recipe step-by-step instead of upload­ing pho­tos, it is so easy to make! It was a good quick recipe to make since I was scram­bling to bake them before Christmas.

Made some illus­tra­tions for fun!



They are so crunchy and are loaded with the pis­ta­chio nuts which bal­ance well with the tart taste of the cran­ber­ries. I think I eat too much every time I make them. This year they became a part of my hand­made cookie col­lec­tion presents. :)

Note: These are my own illus­tra­tions, if you would like to use them for your web­site, please pro­vide a link to by blog. Much appreciated!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

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Baking Dessert Recipes

Chocolate Crème Caramel

November 3, 2011 – 12:08 am

Con­tin­u­ing my Japan­ese recipe of mini dough­nuts, this is also a Japan­ese recipe which also hap­pens to be choco­late. In Japan they call it “pu-rin” for pud­ding, but it is more like a cus­tard. I found this recipe from a Japan­ese web­site called “Kyou-no-ryouri” which means “Cook­ing Today”. It is also a cook­ing TV show from NHK TV chan­nel in Japan. Click here to visit site. It has great con­tent, a very good web­site if you can read Japan­ese and are into Japan­ese cook­ing. I have made the vanilla ver­sion of this dessert before, and on another recipe for the choco­late ver­sion, all you have to do is to add choco­late. I was curi­ous what the result would be like. One of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Japan­ese “purin” is that is always set in small cups. The orig­i­nal recipe is sup­posed to make ten 100 mL cups but I think it is too small for this deli­cious recipe. (No won­der the Japan­ese tend to be so slim!) So I made six cups — I per­son­ally think it is the per­fect size. :)

Print
Choco­late Crème Caramel

Yield: 6 — 150 mL cups/ramekins

Ingre­di­ents

    Caramel
  • 75 grams Gran­u­lated Sugar
  • 10 mL Water
    • Cus­tard
  • 400 mL Milk
  • 20 grams Choco­late (I used semi-sweet)
  • 3 Egg Yolks
  • 2 Whole Eggs
  • 80 grams Gran­u­lated Sugar

Method

    For the Caramel:
  1. Put sugar and water in a small pot and cook until it reaches a caramel stage (a light to medium brown colour). Keep an eye on it — it burns very easily.
  2. Care­fully pour the caramel into 6 cups or ramekins. Be care­ful when doing this because the caramel is very hot! The caramel will turn hard, set the cups aside in a deep oven proof dish until ready to use (for bak­ing in a hot water bath).
    3. For the Custard:
  3. Pre­heat oven to 150C/300F.
  4. Boil about 3–4 cups of water for the hot water bath — keep hot until ready to bake.
  5. Whisk eggs and yolks with about 65 grams of sugar in a medium bowl just until incorporated.
  6. Heat milk and sugar in a another pot, turn off heat just before it boils.
  7. Cool milk a lit­tle and add Choco­late, whisk until mixed together.
  8. Add hot milk into egg mix­ture lit­tle by lit­tle, whisk­ing as you add. Don’t add milk all at once — you will risk scram­bling the eggs.
  9. Once the cus­tard is ready, pour it through a sieve into a mea­sur­ing cup.
  10. Pour the cus­tard into the caramel-filled cups/ramekins.
  11. When ready to bake, place the dish in the oven, pour the hot water to fill the dish until it reaches about half of the height of the cups/ramekins.
  12. Bake for about 20–30 min­utes. When the cus­tard is cooked, it should still be a bit “jig­gly” in the center.
  13. Cool cus­tard and chill in the fridge for at least 2–3 hours before serving.
    14. To Serve:
  14. Run a tooth­pick around the cup/ramekin. Flip the cus­tard over onto a plate, give it a light shake or two and it should come out easily.
http://yummyworkshop.com/2011/11/03/chocolate-crème-caramel/

One of the rea­sons that I like this recipe so much is because of its tex­ture — so smooth and creamy! The choco­late flavour is excep­tion­ally deli­cious with the caramel flavour. It is a light(er) and deca­dent dessert!

Tip: You can make a vanilla ver­sion of the this by omit­ting the choco­late and using ¼ of a vanilla bean.

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