Tuesdays with Dorie: Bad Photos, Delicious Cake
This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, Caramel-Peanut-Topped Brownie Cake, was picked by Tammy from Wee Treats. The pictures of this cake in Dorie’s book look fantastic, so I was excited to give the recipe a try. I decided to make the cake in my mini-loaf pan instead of the round pan it called for.. I knew Nick and I would never be able to eat a whole caramel-covered cake.
This recipe was my very first attempt at caramel, and it went much better than expected! I was unsure about what color the caramel should be, but when I eventually saw it, I knew exactly when to add the butter and cream.
I didn’t use all of the peanuts that the recipe called for since I was only topping one mini-loaf tonight. I made little caramel-peanut turtles with the left-over nuts, and I plan to use the rest of the caramel to make Dorie’s caramel sauce for ice cream.
My apologies for the sad looking photos- it was too late to use natural light, and I used a yellow plate. Yellow plate + yellow light = very yellow photos. Oh well! The cake tasted lovely, and that’s all that counts.
*Find the recipe here.
**Tuesdays with Dorie is a group of bloggers baking through Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours. Find the recipe here.
I love your little cakes. thanks for making my pick!
Love the little cakes, too! I think your pics look pretty darned tempting! Great job.
Your little cakes are darling! Great idea to make them.
It was my first caramel experience too! Wasn’t it fun?
Heya! It’s Aleta from Omnomicon.
You’d asked about what kind of lighting I used, and then I saw you had this post grumbling about bad photos, so it’s a perfect place to answer!
I use natural light whenever possible, but I do live in New England, so my natural daylight is waning. The photos you saw began with daylight and ended with the tracklighting in my kitchen.
Some tips:
1. See if you can rig up some light to come from the side instead of dead-on top. It’s a part of the appeal of daylight.
2. (this is a big one): Adjust the white balance on your camera. You’ll never have yellow pictures again. Here’s a link: http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/whitebalance.htm
3. Pull your photos into photoshop or even the windows picture viewer. If your white balance still wasn’t perfect, you can adjust it with the “color temperature” option. Then I usually up the contrast and brightness just a tiny bit.
Just a few tips to help you out! If you want to have a discussion, (and I love having folks to talk to about this stuff) feel free to give me a shout at a.meadowlark at gmail.