Hi all! Sunday will be my 24th birthday and while I realize I’m writing this post a bit early, it is for good reason! Friday Chet and I are headed off to Kettle Moraine State Park to go tent camping. Friday also happens to be our 4 year wedding anniversary. Considering I’ll be spending the celebratory weekend with mother nature and not my lovely kitchen, I decided to bake and photograph before hand.
You all know by now that I love scouring the web for new recipes to try and inspiration from fellow food photographers. I came across a recipe for peach cupcakes. The cake had peaches in it as well as the frosting. Who wouldn’t love that, right? The photos looked beautiful and the recipe seemed simple enough. I didn’t scroll down to read the comments before committing in my mind to making these. Wish I would have because it would have saved me several hours/ingredients/money in the end. The cake ended up much more like an extremely dense floury muffin. Looking back at the comments almost everyone had bad luck and had to toss the cake out. 😦 I took some comfort in the fact that it wasn’t my poor baking skills.
Frustrated, but determined, I decided to make my favorite vanilla cupcakes and fill them with some peach puree and the homemade peach jam Chet had made earlier in the summer. Much easier, and a delicious result. Then I made my tried and true butter cream frosting and added a bit of peach puree to that as well. The frosting only has a hint of peach flavor so perhaps next time I’ll add more.
I’m sad that the long hours of summer are beginning to shorten. By the time I come home from work and eat dinner I only have a few good hours of natural light left to photograph. This week I had zero time after work so I ended up using my flash equipment. I always prefer natural light, but it is always good to tests your skills with flash so you don’t get rusty! It is even more challenging when you lack any kind of light modifiers other than gridspots. But what is the fun in everything being easy? Improvisation and baking trial and error led me to delicious cupcakes and wonderful images.
Enjoy the images and stay tuned as I’m sure during our camping weekend I’ll be snapping away!
Charlene Champion Photography 
aw, those cupcakes are so cute!
Sounds like a great weekend to come! Happy Birthday & Anniversary. Your cupcakes. and photos look dreamy, as always. I have never tried filling cupcakes with preserves before, but I think I will try for Isaac’s 2nd birthday.
Your cupcakes are very amazing! I wonder if i can do that too!
Thanks for such a wonderful comment! From the looks of your blog you can do that and more!! 🙂 awesome work!
Happy Anniversary Charlene! I hope you are far away from any computer & are snapping all the photos you want! Happy 24th birthday Charlene! What a great experience to turn 24 out in the Kettle Moraine! Cool angles on the cupcakes, looks like I could gobble one up from here! Like wow with the bird & the background! If food is fun you sure say so!