On your marks, get set, bake!
Like many other people, I started to bake (and not just look at the pictures in my cookery books) just over a year ago during lockdown 1.0. Every week I would search online, and decide what I wanted to make the following weekend. Nigella’s ‘Recipe of the Day’ and Lucy Lord’s Instagram channel were major sources of inspiration, and I looked forward to my Sunday bake all week.
As the weeks went by, my confidence grew, as did my collection of store cupboard baking staples, which has now developed into an actual baking cupboard.
My first bake was a cake, a buttermilk chocolate cake, in fact it was my first cake bake! I ended up making a crowd (family) - pleasing chocolate cake, complete with a three ingredient ganache and mini eggs on top. I was so proud! I had always said I couldn’t bake, yet loved looking up recipes, poured over my extensive cookbook collection and devoured cookery shows and series - from a really early age, starting with Keith Floyd.
A weekly Sunday bake followed that first chocolate cake, from brownies, blondies, double chocolate banana bread, to all sorts of cookies, a Biscoff cheesecake, lemon drizzle, coffee, pear & chocolate cakes, banana & pecan muffins and rocky road.
Another chocolate cake followed, simply called Easy Chocolate Cake, a recipe from BBC Good Food (and it really is delicious, I’ve made it three more times since then) - it’s so light and airy!
Then I turned to biscuits…Miranda Gore Browne’s Custardy Creams & Malteser biscuits started the (dough) ball rolling…
Not only was I getting an immense amount of satisfaction from baking every week, I equally enjoyed packaging my bakes up and giving them to my family to test (and hopefully enjoy). I loved photographing what I made. Taking pictures with my iPhone of not only the finished result, but also of the baking process and then uploading them to my Instagram. I’ve always taken pictures of my food but I was almost enjoying it more because I had created what I was capturing and posting.
Christmas was now just around the corner, and with my sister thankfully home from Germany it gave me the opportunity to try my hand at desserts as well as bakes - a chocolate orange mousse with a sable biscuit side, a plum & dark fruit cobbler and Nigella’s show stopping chocolate raspberry pavlova to ring in 2021. It is one of my favourite desserts to make - it’s incredible! Oh and the amazingly light and airy chocolate cake again for Christmas Eve (this time with chocolate buttons and a seasonal icing sugar snowfall).
Towards the end of January I made another Nigella recipe, this time, a bitter orange tart and spent even more time than usual photographing it & even downloaded Lightroom for my phone (I had zero idea what I was doing).
Looking back I think this was the point where I knew I wanted to up my game, and find a course that would help me take my passion for food photography to the next level, but I had no idea where to start or where to find the course.
I didn’t have a camera and I took all my images on my iPhone, could you even do a photography course without a proper camera?
Turns out you can! And I was going to graduate to my first DSLR much quicker than I ever thought.