Client Work: Cloud 9 Specialty Bakery

I was very fortunate to have an opportunity to work with B3 Communications recently and to style and shoot some work for Cloud 9 Specialty Bakery. They are such fun to work with and we had a great collaboration. Cloud 9 Specialty Bakery is a local bakery specializing in gluten-free products. They have developed a special gluten-free baking mix which takes the hassle of making gluten-free treats at home. Used just like flour, it can be substituted cup for cup in any of your favourite recipes with really great results.

We wanted to capture the beauty and simplicity of the ingredient, so we selected a very simple tone-on-tone colour palette that reflected the contemporary sophistication of the brand while acknowledging it's traditional roots.

Here are my favourite images from the shoot of Cloud 9 Baking Mix and Cloud 9 Gluten-Free Bread.

If you are interested in gluten-free baking please check out Cloud 9 Specialty Bakery.

If you are interested in my food styling and photographic work and would like to know more about working with me, please don't hesitate to get in touch at helena@myendlesspicnic.com

Blueberry Apricot Custard Crumble Tarts

So I'm sitting here writing this and there is literally sweat pouring down my temples and I'm wondering who in their right mind would attempt to bake anything on a day such as this. I arose early and was actually glad to see a cloudy sky thinking...ahhh some coolness.  This combined with an unexpected and very welcome gift of local blueberries on Friday night and the presence of a couple of apricots on my counter which in the words of my mother 'needed eating' sparked the idea.  Add to this the fact that I knew that way back, in the depths of my freezer,  were two beautiful previously prepped tart shells and we now had the perfect storm of conditions for my baking madness. So the oven was already preheating by the time I realized this was not going to be the cool day I had imagined. Oh well suck it up. I love it when conditions and and ingredients spring up to magically provide a recipe so here's what I came up with. Blueberry and Apricot Custard Crumble Tarts. A mouthful, you say? Yes it is. And you will like it.

I recently made a lovely lemon tart using a pâte sablée from one of my favourite books Classic Artisan Baking by Julian Day. This has become my new very favourite pastry. It is rich and buttery and almondy and well, it's just perfect. And it freezes very well so when I had some leftovers I immediately pressed them into two tart shells for future use and popped them in the freezer...where I found them today.

The other gift that allowed this to happen today was a crumble mixture that I also keep on standby in the freezer. I inevitably have too much of it whenever I make it and the first time this happened I froze it. It happened by accident the first time but the results were so good that I admit that now I make it in advance and always have some on stand by. I mean who knows when you could be called upon to provide a crumble at a moment's notice.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

Finally, this dessert makes use of a custard filling which I think is one of the loveliest parts of this dessert. It gives it a kind of bread-puddingy-ness (Yes, of course it's a word).

Blueberry Apricot Custard Crumble Tarts

For 4 tarts you will need:

Pastry

4  (4 inch) tart shells lined with your favourite pastry. I used pâte sablée from Classic Artisan Baking.  Before discovering this pastry I had no qualms of buying store-bought pastry (shock-horror!)  from people who were far better at pastry making than I was.  I like a sablée pastry for the almond flour which gives it such a richness.

You will need to follow the directions for your pastry and blind bake it. Usually this involves covering the shells with parchment or foil  and filling with baking beans before baking for about 15-20 minutes. (Depending on your pastry). Remove the beans and parchment and bake for another 5 minutes or so to slightly brown the pastry.  Remove from the oven and set aside to cool.

Custard Filling

1 egg

1/4 cup / 6o ml whipping cream

1 TBSP sugar

pinch of cinnamon

dash of vanilla or almond extract

Lightly beat the egg, add the cream and other ingredients, whisk and then set aside until needed.

Crumb Topping 

(makes more than enough to save for later)

1 cup / 227 grams sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 lb / 113 grams cold butter

1/4 cups / 156 grams all-purpose flour

Combine first three ingredients cutting in the butter until the mixture resembles a coarse meal. Add the flour and rub together with your fingertips until the mixture has the texture of fine breadcrumbs.  Set aside until ready to use. Freeze what you don't use to for the crumbles of your future. (Just top your fruit with the mixture and you are good to go).

Fruit Filling

about 1  cup of blueberries

3 apricots, sliced

To assemble:

Once cool, fill the tart shells with a single layer of blueberries, then arrange the apricots on top to your liking. I used 5 apricot slices per tart but you could use more. Then fill in the holes/gaps with more blueberries.  Depending on how sweet your fruit is, you may want to sprinkle some sugar on the fruit at this stage. Taste it and make a call. Now pour the custard mixture over the tarts until the level of custard is just shy of the top of the pastry case. (Stir the custard before pouring as it may have settled). Finally sprinkle some of the crumble mixture on top. Really this part is up to you depending on how much crumble you prefer but I used about 2 TBSP per tart.

Bake at 350 until the crumb topping is golden brown and the custard and fruit juices are bubbling up through the top of the crumb.

Eat and enjoy while mopping the sweat from your brow and thinking how very clever you are!

Wordless Wednesday: Meyer Lemons

Brown Bread & Nostalgia

The Irish are always accused of being overly nostalgic and maybe this affects all who visit there. It's cold and wet now in Vancouver. This time of year always reminds me of my time in Ireland. Not that the sun never shone when I was there. It definitely did. But when I moved there in mid-September 1995, I soon found myself in the middle of a dark, wet and windy October. I'm shooting Irish Brown Bread at the moment, the perfect antidote to cold and windy weather. I can't help think of that time, and of  the landscape, the people and the magic that inhabits the place. Here's a few detail shots from my current shoot.

Ready for some baking?

I just completed a review of Julian Day's Classic Artisan Baking for cookthatbook.com. I really enjoyed working through the recipes in this book and making pictures of them. With lots of favourites, old and new, I really recommend this book for anyone who loves to bake.  Here's one of my favourite shots from the shoot. Luscious raspberry jam for a riff on a bakewell tart.  To see more, you can check out the full review here.

Happy Baking!

Style me hungry

This weekend, I was lucky enough to take part in Clare Barboza and Becky Selengut's food styling workshop in Seattle. Clare is a Seattle-based documentary food photographer whose style I have been attracted to for a while now. She has a way of capturing the story behind the food that I really admire.  Becky Selengut is a chef, cookbook author, and teacher with a very quick wit who makes delicious food. The combination was fantastic and made for a fun and inspiring day of styling and photography.

We talked about colour, texture of props, and how to style food for camera using natural techniques. Then there was lots of time to explore and plan and execute your own shots. Clare has a fantastic studio with tons of natural light which gives me serious studio envy. She also has a fantastic 'wall-o-props' (check it here) which makes me feel like a kid in a candy store. So many possibilities!

I  really wanted to create a farmhouse atmosphere and found some great rustic, antique props to work with. Here is one of the shots I made, of some seriously yummy, sweet and savoury, butternut squash beignets, prepared by Becky. I'm getting hungry just thinking about them again.