Bakexcuse.me

Happy World Chocolate Day 🍫

Yes, I know it was yesterday but I was too busy eating chocolate 🙃

I admit, I baked brownies countless times during the past several months 🤎 and I don’t plan to stop anytime soon 🤣

What’s your latest baking obsession?

🍒 Backgrounds 🍒

Despite having multiple vinyl backgrounds I found myself using kitchen/bathroom tiles the most over the last 2 years 😎

It all started with me curiously strolling through the tile store next to the place where I bought some Portuguese plates for the project I worked on at the time. I accidentally found 2 tiles that I instantly fell in love with 🥰 But when I decided to buy them I was told that I can’t buy individual pieces 🥺 After I simply explained why I needed just one of each tile, the seller gifted them to me. I was in shock 😳 I wish I had some cookies on hand to share with him but I didn’t 🤷🏻‍♀️ (even though I often bring food wherever I go).

Back to the point - here are some things that you should consider before heading to the tile store:
🔸Ceramic tiles are heavy
🔸For me 60x60cm tiles work the best - not too heavy but not too small
🔸Put a cloth under the tile so you don’t scratch your surface (like I did with my new desk) 🤦🏻‍♀️
🔸Plan storage space - I simply lean them on the wall and put a cardboard between them
🔸Pick some matte tiles if you don’t want to deal with reflections
🔸Handle them carefully as they can break and chip
💸 Here in Spain one set of 4 tiles 60x60cm cost between €20-40

⁉️Oh, it’s been a minute since I posted something here, do we still use # 🤨

Here is some work from my students from the past week. 🥹 They learned a lot about food plating and even though most of them weren't interested in fine dining and "smaller amount of food on the plate"🫣 🤣 they did an awesome job. 👌
You can see how their plating and photography skills improved in just three days while I was teaching them. 🥰
As I always say: Staying open minded and seeking for solutions rather than discussing problems is way to go.

This was 4th group of students that I taught at and I can't wait to go back ✨

Today at students had a praline workshop with chef from . They learned about tempering chocolate and praline making. Some tempering techniques are messier than others but they often give more desirable results, so that's forgivable. 🤣 It's true, students made some chocolate mess (see my Stories) but it resulted with beautiful treats 😍

Also, seeing them so focused in the kitchen today inspired me to take some photos of their work and use them to explain color theory and composition more clearly. 🤓 That's something we'll be working on tomorrow.

For me, creating beautiful photos start in the kitchen, with recipe development and not by adding unnecessary things to the scene. When food is prepared perfectly you don't need to hide any imperfections, just capture the details - colors, textures, shapes. It's that simple.

Then you focus on color theory, composition and light et voilà - you're making people hungry with every photo you take.