dark photography – No More Mondays

This cake turned out brilliantly well at every stage. It’s a stack of 3 x 6″ chocolate sponge cakes, sandwiched with fresh buttercream flavoured and coloured with raspberry compote or goo.

Standard sponge ingredients: 8oz flour, butter and sugar with 2oz cocoa powder and a little coffee with sour cream to lift it up.

I used cake strips round the edges of the tins to prevent caramelisation of the sides and help to level the cakes.

The buttercream is a rich vibrant berry pink flecked with tiny traces of raspberry skin. I crumb-coated and put the cake in the fridge overnight then covered it with plain buttercream all around this morning.

Remember the crystallised pear slices I made a few weeks ago? It was time to use them. They went all round the cake with a few beautifully curled pear slices on top. Really loved the colours.

I flicked some gold lustre dust and fine edible glitter over everything. Finally, I picked out a few highlights by hand painting some edible gold (Pixie Dust brand) paint here and there.

Finally, the picture. My second go at Dark Photography.

Mr Bee cut a side side off an old printer box, lined it with black foam board and pinned the construction together with T-pins, leaving a vertical gap to create a chink of light between boards on the open side. I placed a diffuser-covered light to the open sideand mounted my camera on a tripod facing and cake for a head on shot with a 50mm lens.

I like the shot. I love the vibrancy of the colour of the pear slices in the light and the otherwise dark, atmospheric nature generally.

Possibly a little too dark…. here it is slightly lightened up:

Slightly less dark still?

Want to see the cake in full light?

Mr B is just better at some jobs than me. Fact. Otherwise I would do them. He can be, by nature, a difficult person to nudge along, though and he will ~~very frequently~~ ~~frequently often~~ sometimes leave things n-e-a-r-l-y done.

We’ve recently had a new fitted kitchen and Mr B has done a lot of finishing and decorating. He’s worked really hard and the kitchen has been a PITA at times but it’s looking so clean and bright that I love it already. He’s done a fantastic job, good man. I don’t want him to collapse in a heap getting it finished but it’s frustratingly nearly done.

To take my mind off things, I made this cake yesterday. It’s an almond sponge layered with cherry buttercream (cherry compote or ‘goo’ with more cherries roughly whizzed in the blender and sieved a little to get rid of excess juice, all mixed into some buttercream). It’s topped off with chocolate gananche and a bunch of fresh cherries, ripe and sweet.

The cake was amazingly fresh, light and tasty. Took two slices round to my neighbour – she rang me some 30 mins later to tell me it was the best cake I’d made – EVER! Made my halo a bit heavy, I can tell you but what a lovely compliment.

Also had a go at dark photography. It’s sometimes called ‘Mystic Light’, or Chiaroscuro (an Italian term pinched from the art world to describe a technique that emphasises the the contrast between shadow and light in an image.

I extended my kitchen table full length, made an enclosure out of black foam board held together with T-pins (the very same as used for blocking crochet) and lined the bottom with an A2 length of black mount board. I left a slit between two sheets of foamboard to let in a ‘sliver’ of light.

My tripod faced the scene and lowered for a head on shot. The opening between the foamboard was covered with a diffuser (the light from the window was streaming in).

The shot above has been enhanced with various Photoshop filters increasing shadow, contrast, blacks, reducing whites and highlights, masking a couple of highlights and using Curves to dampen them a little, etc.

I’m following The Bite Shot on You Tube for tips and techniques https://thebiteshot.com/

Finally got round to making a tray of meringues using a Sultane nozzle.

xoxoxo

Tag: dark photography

Crystallised pear slices cake decoration

Cherry Sponge Cake