// Recipes at the bottom of this post //
With goals and aspirations to try and bake more, and do more food/cooking photography (and also learn a bit more), I present to you 'Baking Bad', because I really just could not resist the pun.
With goals and aspirations to try and bake more, and do more food/cooking photography (and also learn a bit more), I present to you 'Baking Bad', because I really just could not resist the pun.
Often in baking, especially my journey with macarons, the final product isn't a success. Or, for me, the first one is, but the second, third, fourth tries aren't. But that's okay. It's a learning curve and you really have to keep trying and remember that "if they can do it, why can't I?".
So, with the new busy lifestyle ahead of me, I'm still going to try to bake/cook occasionally, because it makes me happy and I like having a shot at food photography. There's something fun about organising the dish so delicately so that the entire meal comes together in an aesthetically pleasing shot. Whilst I begin my descent into an overdose of sugar, hopefully I'll learn a few things about cooking and product placement, but even if I don't, I'll 'bake it till I make it' (too many 'bake' puns have been made in the last 24 hours).
...
Before Uni hits us square in the face, a few friends and I thought it would be nice to satisfy our baking cravings.
It'd been a long time since any of us had baked (personally, over half a year! Almost nine months, actually), and we missed it tremendously.
I don't know a lot about cooking, I'm not going to lie. But even today I learnt a lot more about baking (from the master herself: MA; please open your own home-bakery ASAP!!), and I'm not going to lie, it was fun (it really was).
Although lighting wasn't optimal, there was a really nice glass door that made a great source of natural light. However, the somewhat difficult lighting in the kitchen meant it was kind of hard to film the cooking process (also, it was getting a bit too cramped to stuff my tripod in there). So, after a few attempts, I decided to alter my initial plan to make a video, and instead, stick with only photography.
First on the list was Green Tea Macarons!
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| Silicon trays are such a genius niche market! Once you try it, you're never going back. |
If I had to say that I was anywhere near 'skilled' at baking a particular dish, it would be macarons. The reason for this is not necessarily because I am good (occasionally they still lack feet or crack), but because it's the desert dish that I've made the most, and I probably understand more of.
With a lot of trials in the last two years, I've finally managed to get the process down pat. In saying so, I still did a little dance of celebration (literally) when I discovered the macaron shells had produced absolutely beautiful feet whilst in the oven (yes!!)
We started with the macarons because as we all know, they needed to be left out for a while to form a nice, hard outer layer before we could chuck them into the oven.
Today was also the day we experimented and tried using the silicon piping mats (property of MA's). I'm not going to lie, although we were initially hesitant at using them, they were such a good decision to make. The macarons from the mats turned out so perfectly shaped, round, with good feet, and bottoms that looked as smooth as a baby's... well, bottom.
With an initial slight problem peeling them off the mats (best to leave them to completely cool), they all were removed in tact and by-far the best macaron shells I've made in a long time.
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| Shout-out to DS for holding the plate, haha |
Whilst waiting for the macarons to cook, we also started on the ANZAC cookies.
For those who don't know, I absolutely love ANZAC cookies. Like, with a passion. Like, "I will pay a Library Cafe a ridiculous amount because I have a really strong craving for ANZAC cookies right now and they're selling them". (legit).
So, when the others (DS, MA, MM, and JY) agreed to making ANZAC cookies, I immediately grew excited. I hadn't made them in five years (and thus forgotten the process), and so I was super keen to learn again and perhaps make it at home myself in the near future.
Watching MA work her magic, the ANZAC cookies were completed in a jiffy, and waiting to enter the oven as soon as the macarons were out.
They turned out fantastic.
And might I say, delicious.
I couldn't stop eating all the mini ones that we made. (There seems to be an obsession that every time we bake, we must make mini versions of the food. They just seem to taste better, even though we all know it doesn't.) By the time we were ready to plate up, I swear half of the ANZAC cookies were gone already (not even joking).
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| Thanks JY for being a hand model |
Okay! Onwards to the next food!
The chocolate tart was MA's idea (as was the chocolate ANZAC cookies), and so with careful precision and much wisdom, she also whipped up the pastry in a flash. As that was cooking up in the oven, we moved onto the tart filling.
I've never made chocolate tarts before, so this was a super new experience as well.
With a few problems with bubbles under the pastry (which was quickly corrected and dealt with), we managed to produce a nice looking tart. Although the pastry was a bit over-sized (we kind of had no choice, since the cooking-tray was that size), it looked quite alright!
With some creativity and spare fruit lying around, we managed to decorate the tart with some icing sugar and strawberries, and it really was the final touch in making the tart look that extra bit more.
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| Yum |
With everything well and cooked, we lay out a white tablecloth (also improvised) and spent a good five to ten minutes taking photographs (mostly outlays) of the fruits of our labour.
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| DS |
With much improvisation, fidgeting around with the props (fake flowers from a wreath that we found on the table), and struggles as I tried to take an outlay photo with a 35mm (and 1.5 crop sensor, also made more difficult due to my height), I think we all finally managed to take a decent overview pic.
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| After much struggle |
It had been a long day of hard work (about three hours in total of solid cooking), and with much inexperience (exception of MA), we managed to do it! And since I have yet to experience any signs of food poisoning, I think for now we can conclude that it was a success!
Eating the food was just as good as baking it.
As said before, I already loved the ANZAC cookies. I'm also quite a big fan of matcha/green tea, and so the macarons were tasty (though, over the many times I've baked them, I've started to get over the initial fad and they're not that special anymore -- they didn't taste, y'know, oh-my-god-this-is-so-good-it's-basically-made-from-the-tears-of-phoenixes-and-puppies). The tart itself was a great consistency (the nice, fudge thickness), but I've never been a fan of overly-chocolaty foods, and especially tarts (unless they're lemon or cheesecake). Though good, I sort of treated it like how I treat mudcake and fudge -- nice to try and tastes good, but I'd probably only have, at maximum, one slice per week.
But, none-the-less, they looked nice, they turned out a success, and we all had a lot of fun whilst doing it. (It was also heaps great to finally catch up with friends -- a few of them I hadn't seen in a while!)
So that concludes Baking Bad session number 1. I'm sure it won't be the last (at least, I hope).
Good food and great humour. Such and incredible read
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