In the great world of food blogging, there are some recipes that are an immediate hit and photograph really well; but then there are some recipes that don’t come out right because the idea was all wrong, the recipe needed to be retested, or the food tastes fine, but when you take your food to “set” the pictures don’t move you or they just didn’t come out right. In the picture that you are observing above this text consisted off all of those things I mentioned. Do you know how much food I have wasted since I started blogging? I mean seriously, there were some things (more than what is in this graph) that I made that was just not that good or I really wasn’t happy with the photos. Now some of these may look good to you (thank you for that) but for whatever reason for me, they just didn’t move me and/or I simply hate the photos and/or the recipe. So far in my 18 months of blogging these are just a few of the recipes I made that just didn’t make it to the site.
1. That was an ice cream cake that I tried to make with two layers of yellow cake, a middle layer of chocolate ice cream with brownie chunks and a top layer of vanilla ice cream. Sounds like a good idea right? Wrong! The execution of this cake was not that great and it really didn’t taste like anything. Maybe I will try to make an ice cream cake again someday but I was turned off on that idea when I attempted to make this one. It just was wrong. Not to mention the picture. I thought it had some personality with the dark showing but the more I looked at it the more I hated it. Not to mention the way the light that I captured made it worse.
2. In the beginning of my blogging, I started off making cupcakes. That is how I got my nickname, “cupcake”. These were Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes. I don’t know why I didn’t post these actually, but I think that is when my food photography eye started to become enlightened because I just couldn’t help but notice how blue the photo was and I didn’t like it. I put it right next my balcony and it just didn’t come out the way I wanted it to. Obviously the camera that I used, Nikon Digital Camera, had a lot to do with it.
3. This was White Fish with New Potatoes dish that I made. I really enjoyed it. The recipe wasn’t hard. Honestly, I really hated the picture. I feel like it wasn’t clear on what dish it was. Also there are some foods that are really difficult to photograph. Sometimes its hard to find the right styling and composition for a photo and this is a prime example of just that. I couldn’t find my “mojo” for this particular dish.
4. Okay, these are Tofu Sticks that went horribly wrong. They don’t look bad but I couldn’t, in good faith, give you guys a recipe that was good for this dish. I thought it was horrible. It wasn’t too bad if you dipped them in sweet chili sauce but there was no flavor. Yes, I marinated the tofu for a while in a marinade but it just wasn’t good. I will try again someday, I guess. Also, I really didn’t like the picture for some reason. It isn’t a bad photo, it just felt empty to me.
5. I think this is obvious as to why this didn’t get posted. These were homemade fish sticks made with cod. The white balance in this picture was awful ( this was before I understood how to manipulate white balance on my camera and photo software) and the lighting exposure was too low because it was a really dark and dreary day. Therefore, the picture came out kind of blurry and I didn’t have a tripod at the time. So it had to get canned. The fish sticks were good though.
6. These were cupcakes I made where the frosting was a combination of mini chocolate candy bars that I had left over that needed to go away. First of I didn’t like the cupcake liners that I used. It didn’t go with the recipe, at all. I think they were all I had; Second, the frosting was horrible! It was way to sweet and had no flavor. It taste like chocolate sugar; and lastly, I didn’t like the composition of the photo. To me, it didn’t make sense and it looked like something that I just put together to get a blog post out there. If you are a food blogger, don’t do that. If you are not motivated and you are just putting something to put something out there, it will show up. Trust me.
7. This is simple, the cake was dry and I don’t even remember what type of cake this was. Also, I really didn’t like the pictures.
8. This was Salted Caramel Ice Cream that I made and these were Brown Butter Shortbread Cookies I made. I needed to make the cookies again to get the time right of how long to bake the cookies because they came out too hard and just okay. There was nothing wrong with the ice cream. I don’t know why that didn’t make the final cut. I think I got hung up on the title I should give this particular recipe. I just wasn’t feeling it.
I will be sure to share with you my food failures with you as I collect them. Believe me, food blogs look yummy and cool, but a lot of the photos and the recipes that you see us post comes with many trials and tribulations. We taste, waste, and retest many of our recipes all in hope that we are sharing a quality dish with you that you can share with your loved ones that will bring you close together and that you really can enjoy.
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