Cake Photos

I've been in a bit of a writing slump recently, so decided to try my hand at food photography instead. I'm not a great photographer, as I've never had to be - my dad, my sister, and now Mountain Man are the photographers in the family. I don't think I have the patience to set up a good photo like they do. And I prefer snapshots anyway that capture a particular moment - my camera is always full of strange photos of people I don't know (a couple embracing on the banks of the Seine) or weird things I notice in nature or architecture (a palm tree wearing sunglasses and a nose, bales of hay lined up in rows, a blue door). So my food photography isn't spectacular as I know I try too hard. I will need to hire someone to take photos of my food in the future!

I made this cake for my assistant here at PubCo, who had a birthday today. This is a little adaptation of a Nigella Lawson recipe - it started out as a plain (but delicious) chocolate cake, and a couple of friends suggested adding raspberries to liven it up. The joy of Nigella Lawson is that all of her recipes are generally perfect as is (unlike Martha Stewart's recipes, which always need tweaking), but are also generally simple enough to build on. This cake was a perfect foundation to add raspberries, but could also work with crushed espresso beans (and the addition of coffee to the frosting) or you could make it a cookies-and-cream cake and do a white frosting with Oreos sprinkled inside and on top. Or peanut butter! Or caramel! Ooh, there may be more cakes in my future...

Anyway, here's the cake:

Top row: Dry ingredients; the two layers (so much easier when you don't have to cut the cake in half)

Middle row: Chocolate for the frosting; smashed raspberries with a bit of sugar to help them mellow

Bottom row: The middle of the cake; cake sandwich

The final product!