Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Scrumptious Snickerdoodles

     Making homemade cookies is always a great idea. Never in history
     has the following conversation been recorded:

     Person 1: "Do you want fresh homemade cookies?

     Person 2: "No, I don't."



Making homemade cookies is both rewarding and very enjoyable. The anticipation, waiting for that timer to ding, is excruciating. As the aroma fills the room, all you can think about is, "How much longer until I can taste that cookie?" This is the reason store-bought cookies were created -- because people couldn't handle the wait. True story, look it up! (Don't actually.)

To light this shot, we used two point-light sources from the back. One light was coming from the left and one from the right. The purpose of these lights was to skim across the surface of the cookies to bring out their texture. A large, soft light source from above filled in the shadows and kept the contrast low. But even with the overhead light, we still needed some light to highlight the main cookie. To do that, we brought in a modeled mirror to reflect the back-lights onto the front of
the cookie. 


Make them now


Wednesday, February 5, 2014

The comfort of biscuits



  Everyone loves warm biscuits, fresh from the oven…

When it’s cold outside, a warm biscuit just seems like the natural bread selection to go with most meals or for a special treat. A biscuit is the original comfort food. Take a bite of its crusty golden top and soft, fluffy inside and you’ll be on cloud 9. Pure creamery butter is a requirement, but you might also add some honey.

Biscuits go with almost everything, and in fact, they make ho-hum meals better. You’re in a hurry and have a quick bowl of soup or a quick salad; think how much better each would be with a simple, mouth-watering biscuit!

Biscuits are national and international favorites. Add gravy to a biscuit and you have a proper Southern breakfast food. In England, a biscuit's a cracker and in Canada, it's a cookie. And cooks everywhere are always trying to improve upon the almost perfect. We now have recipes for cheese biscuits, pizza biscuits and the pièce de résistance – bacon biscuits!

Good news, you can actually make perfectly simple and simply perfect biscuits like these in a half hour.