Doughnut Peaches

I found these doughnut peaches in a far-away Woolworths and couldn't resist buying them after reading about them on so many blogs lately. When it comes to peaches and nectarines, I've always been nectarine girl all the way and I never really liked peaches, but I think that's been because I've never tried a white peach. Or one of these babies.

They are amazing, full of flavour and so juicy. I have not seen them since my visit to the far-away Woolworths, not at any of our grocers or at the markets. Is it a climate thing? Is it too hot for doughnut peaches up here? Are they going out of season? I hope that there isn't a reason and that I am just not looking hard enough, because I really enjoyed them.

I tried being fancy with some of them and cut them in half, topped them with some beaten egg whites and sugar and put them under the grill to give them a meringue hat, but I burned the meringue. I've bought some more (regular) peaches so I can try again, but for now I'm just sharing how much I love doughnut peaches.

Homemade Lightbox

This little guy was a gift from my Secret Santa - isn't he awesome? Thank you Santa!

Do you remember being a kid and whitegoods or browngoods in big boxes and the boxes were more entertaining than what came in them? Well, my mother bought us our very first Scanpans for Christmas and they came in a lovely big box. I adore my saucepans but I also had big plans for the box.

Previously for my food blogging photos I had tried using a box covered with some wrapping paper to give some consistency to my pictures and to hide the hodge-podge backgrounds because I could never find somewhere nice to take the photos.


For a while, that was my setup. My little box usually set up on the stairs as that was where the best light was. Then my box got crushed when we moved and there was nowhere in the new house where the light was food-photography friendly. The light was so frustrating in the new house that I let my photos go a little bit. No one really wants to see the vaccuum cleaner in the background of your shots, but I didn't have anywhere else to take them!


D was taking out the Christmas rubbish and I stopped him from taking the box because I wanted to make another background. He sent me to Google and told me to search for a tissue paper lightbox which brought up this page on WikiHow.


We couldn't find any white tissue paper without having to venture into the Boxing Day sales, so my lightbox is blue, but it turned out quite well. Here's to slightly more professional looking backgrounds in the future!

This morning we went for a lovely drive down to Max Brenner on the Gold Coast. We well and truly got our chocolate fix after a hug mug of hot chocolate and a chocolate drizzled waffle with chocolate ice-cream. I forgot I had brought along the camera and D had already started by the time I remembered, so this is a mid-meal shot. It was good. After our chocolate breakfast and making my lightbox, it's time for our Boxing Day Dunch, bring on more roasts!!

Proteas

Beautiful proteas from the markets at Moore Park.

More flowers

Unfortunately, as you can see I missed the light by a little bit. I'll try again today.

Tulips

Beautiful tulips from Rosalie Gourmet Market. Tulips and lillies are my favourite flowers.

Playing with my food (photography)

DD has been teaching me a little bit on how to use our Canon SD110 compact digital camera, so I can take better pictures of my food. I was practicing this morning on a Classic Belgium Chocolate brownies from Dello Mano which DD bought from the markets yesterday.


This one was pretty much a point and shoot job, using manual macro mode and no flash.


For this one and the top photo I played with my focus. I like the top one the best because it shows the detail of the brownie, but I like the positioning of the one above. If I could have gotten the level of detail in the picture above, it would have been perfect. I think the little bit of distance between the box and the brownie really ensured that the brownie had centre stage in the picture, and allowed me to get the ribbon in too.

It was fun!! The pictures can only get better! My next task - not that I'm even close to mastering this one yet - is to find or make somewhere I can take my pictures or set up for my pictures that doesn't have a miscellaneous background. Do you like my bookcase and pedestal fan?


And here's a grilled cheese sandwich for more practice

Petits fours

We went to the farmer's markets at New Farm Park this morning and bought these beautiful petits fours. The top one was passionfruit cheesecake and the second was double chocolate.

Short black cupcakes

AND what is quite possibly my best food picture ever - if only there was a touch more light, but still, the best so far!!!

I had a pretty crappy day today, for no particular reason. I just wasn't doing what I wanted to be doing and I didn't know what it was that I wanted to do. I tried to perk myself up by going shopping and when that didn't work, I tried making cupcakes.

The recipe for these short black cupcakes comes from JenJen's blog Milk and Cookies and you can find the recipe here. They are a lovely mix of coffee and chocolate flavours with a meringue frosting which is also coffee flavoured.

I found the instant coffee that I used to be a bit too bitter for this cake though - not unusual, as I find it bitter to drink too. Next time I will be more careful in my coffee selection. It was lovely and easy to make, except that my stupid stand mixer can't mix 3 egg whites so I had to do it by hand, but that's hardly a fault of the recipe.

However, the mixmaster did a masterful job of creaming the butter and sugar and egg, so I do have to give it some credit.

And credit to to my (well, DD's) four year old Canon Powershot with no optical zoom to speak of for helping me get a nice picture in spite of my shaking hands!