Part of the perfect home is the perfect hostess. Like many women finding their balance between career and domesticity, I have unrealistic dreams about throwing glamorous parties with beautiful centerpieces, calligraphy name cards, and photogenic dishes. I figure with these ambitions, I should start honing my baking skills.
The ultimate goal of course it to bake something so beautiful that there is a collective “Oooh” across the dining room and everyone can’t help themselves but get their phones out and take a photo.
In this post – a terribly photogenic but downright inedible lemon ricotta cake, the moistest chocolate cupcakes in the world with delicate matcha green tea buttercream, and some pretty decent yet unimpressive lemon bars.
No you didn’t misread. I did something stupid which is that I took a random recipe off of pinterest without doing any research on the blogger nor did I read any reviews on the recipe. Now the photos are gorgeous, just as they were the first time I saw it on pinterest. But I might as well have been eating sawdust. Now, to be fair, I made a very cavalier substitution of coconut flour for almond flour because I didn’t have enough almond flour left in the house – oops. Anyway, here are the beautiful photos but BEWARE DO NOT MAKE.
The cupcakes were a completely different story. While they were beautiful and as delicious as can be, the photos came out as the poorest of the bunch. I clearly have some work to do. I originally laughed at myself because I didn’t pay any attention to what the recipe yielded and wound up making 23 cupcakes for a family of 5. But guess what? We had no issues finishing them off at all.
The lemon bars were as I said earlier, uninspired. But I’m practicing my baking and my food photography skills so that they will be sharpened and keen by the time the house is built.
Overall I would give myself a B+ for taste and a C for photography on the spread.
Hmm-I don’t remember getting any lemon bars…