Christmas Cupcakes

This year, my sister has been baking a lot as we are spending most of our time home and well, you gotta kill the boredom somehow, right? One of the things she has baked more often are cupcakes, with many different recipes, hence, many, many variants of them in both, flavor and looks.

 

For this season, she decided to bake some cupcakes for her friends as Christmas presents; needless to say, they were quite popular, and delicious of course, but also, very pretty looking. This time, chocolate was the cake flavor for all of them and, as for the frosting goes, for some of them, she tried some simple icing; some butter and some chocolate. For some others, she tried with some fondant, which was cool because she was able to add some writing and little drawings in some of them in order to personalize them and make them an even nicer present.

                  

 

One of the coolest things about cupcakes, is that you can get a thousand combinations to play around with the cake flavor and the frosting/icing/topping, so you can get many original variations for each special occasion or just for fun.

 

 

 

 

 


In the end, all of the effort was worth it and the cupcakes ended up looking (and tasting!) amazing! If you wanna get some cupcakes, Gichef is up for catering for your party, special occasion, or simple guiltless gluttony, so feel free to contact her! And if you actually bake your own and want to get some Professional Photographs of them, contact me!

 

French Macarons: Attempt 1

Once you have tried French Macarons (the Parisian ones, the real deal) is kind of hard not to be obsessed about them, especially if you're into French Patisserie. My personal favorites, although probably not as worldly famous as the Pierre Hermé ones, are the ones from Huré, which slogan is "Createur de Plaisir"...and OMG, aren't they real pleasure creators! But well, we're only focusing on Macarons today.

So, me and my sister are totally obsessed about them, so much we decided to try to make our own coz, you know, you cannot be traveling to Paris everytime you feel like having macarons!

We  went through a ton of recipes and watched many, many videos, after which, we almost felt like it was too easy to make them...wrong! It seems way easier than it really is, however, for our first attempt, I don't think it was THAT bad...I mean, it could have been worse.

Here is the visual documentation of our attempt. I don't put up the recipe here because you can easily find it online or you can always go to Gichef's Blog to find it.

Stay tuned for our future attempts which, hopefully, will turn out (almost) like the real deal!

Le Marche au Paris

While in Paris, one of the most wonderful things to do is to go shopping, of course, although this time, I am talking about a different kind of shopping, I'm talking about shopping at the local street markets more commonly known as Les Marches.

The feeling of shopping at a Marche can't compare to the feeling of shopping at the super market -which is pretty much non-existent. Parisian Marches is what people in the US know as "Farmer's Markets". Not only you're buying fresh products but you're getting really good quality which, usually, come with a good price as well. Let's say if you were a Chef or had a restaurant, this would be the place to buy the good stuff.

Just like a super market, at a Marche you can find everything you need going from fresh fruits and vegetables, to meat, chicken and fish, including some really good cheese, wine, spices, flowers and whatnot.

Marches in Paris are normally set up one or two days a week and there are a couple in each neighborhood, so you can be sure to catch yours once or twice a week and get supplies for the whole week.

On Sundays (or weekends) a good option to buy is roast chicken, as it quite fresh and tasty, so not the same and baking it in the oven yourself -I totally recommend it!

Not only will you get a good shopping done, but you can also enjoy the nice and unique things of a French Market, such as live music right in the middle of it -always nice to put you in a good mood while getting the "super" done.

One of the most interesting things you can find there, is a wide variety of spices and seeds and stuff like that. Very handy if you like to mix it up in the kitchen!

And well, my absolute favorite part about all this is, of course, the cheese! OMG, the variety and prices you can get for some really good, fresh, tasty cheese! J'adore! You can get cheese to make many different dishes, to go with some other or simply to enjoy it after a meal with some wine and a baguette, just like any Parisian would. Oh, and you can also find some nice wines for a very good deal, so watch out for it and be ready to spend some money and spend it good!

Photos taken at: Marche Reunión, Paris,

Intro to Food Photography: Beef Skewers

As most of you know, most of my previous work as a Photographer has been on fields such as Architecture, Portrait, Music Photography, Travel and a couple of others but, lately, my eye has been drawn to Food Photography, and well, it is only natural having a Chef sister who not only cooks things that taste amazingly but who also makes things look so awesome you pretty much drool in front of them. I've been shooting some of the things she cooks for some time now but merely cause I love shooting anything and everything, until sometime ago that I realized Food is a subject that actually inspires me to shoot and I feel happy when I do it. So naturally, I wanna do it more often and more "formally", if you will. I wanna practice as much as I can since it's a subject field I'd like to master eventually.

Today, I am posting what I like to call "My Official Introduction to Food Photography", and I such introduction is with something that looks pretty good and, let me tell you, tasted just as good: Beef Skewers!

Now, I am not a Chef but a Photographer so please do not expect me to share recipes with you as I am not good at that, so rather, I'll just talk a bit about the process and the photographs.


You start with some tomato, green and red pepper, and onions which make for a very Mexican dish.

Once everything is chopped, including the beef, get some toothpicks and start inserting everything into them; combining them in a way they make sort of a beautiful color flag.

You want to get something like this in every toothpick.

Have a frying pan with a little cooking oil on ready at a low flame and, once you have a batch of skewers ready, put them on the frying pan carefully to make sure they don't touch each other to avoid them from sticking one to another.

When you see them getting a nice brownish color, that means they're cooked on the lower side and it's time to turn them over. You see how good they look on the already cooked side?

You need to be checking on them to make sure they don't burn out but they do get the right color and degree of doneness.

This is what you want it to look like: juicy, brownish and seemingly rich.

Once you are done cooking all of the skewers, you put them all together on a tray.

However, if you're not convinced with just laying them over the tray, you can always step it up and make a bit of a nicer presentation by adding a bed of lettuce or anything else that you think will bring up the dish's look.

Remember, love at first sight works with food, too!

I mean, can you honestly tell me you're not drooling right now just by looking at this juicy, fresh and delish-looking skewers?

A yummy salad is always a good idea to go with pretty much any dish; you can mix it up a bit and add some of the green and red pepper you had left from the skewers and cut it in a creative way not to have a "boring" salad by your dish.

Add any dressing of your preference to spice it up a bit and the result will be a salad you can't resist!

Besides having a dressing for the salad, it is always good to have some dressing for the main dish, in this case, the beef skewers. Being beef makes it easier to accompany it with a wide variety of dressings so everybody can pick their favorite and that way you can't go wrong!

So, you finally have your delicious skewers very well presented and accompanied by a nice dressing, in this case, Green Pepper dressing which makes it an interesting combination; and, a side of fresh salad and voilá, you have a delicious dish you simply cannot resist! Bon appétit!

Special thanks to Gichef  for cooking so amazingly and share it with me so I can share it with you!