The carrot cake that almost started an angry mob

Carrot cake with pistachios and walnuts

About two weeks ago, I met an American from Michigan who moved to New Zealand and unexpectedly became a Kiwi farmer. In 2009, he started a WordPress blog called Moon Over Martinborough to chronicle their life in the farm which eventually led to a best-selling book of the same title. Carrot cake everyone wants is the most enticing story behind a recipe that I’ve ever read. It teaches you a lesson about sharing your most beloved recipes, unless you want an angry mob of pitchfork-carrying farmers at your door.

I baked the gluten-free version of “Dave’s carrot cake” and dedicated it to Sir Poppy Dick, my love partner’s dad who celebrated his birthday recently. To give it my personal finishing touch, I prettified it with crushed pistachios. The cake was incredibly rich and moist that I decided to keep it in the freezer. JD and I would take a slice or two once a day and we’re happy. You can find the recipe here: http://jaredgulian.com/2011/01/19/carrot-cake-everyone-wants/.

But before you go, I wanted to share a recipe on how I transformed some unappetizing food images into delectable-looking ones. It is the middle of Autumn in New Zealand and natural lighting is becoming hard to come by. It gets dark early. This shot was taken at 4PM. The blue tone bewildered me. I had to do something about it!

The best white-balanced gluten-free carrot cake in the world

Ingredients

• a digital camera that lets you shoot images in RAW format
• some carrots
• some cashews
• some pistachios for garnishing
• a nice-looking carrot cake (I took out a big slice for a glimpse of its moistness)
• a white handmade paper to use as tabletop cover
• diffused natural lighting (as natural as you can get, no flash please!)
• a strange looking fork (optional)
• and last but not least, the amazing photo-editing software called Lightroom

Method

1. Preheat your camera to F4 for 1/320 sec. Don’t hesitate to bump up your ISO. As long as you shoot in RAW, Lightroom will take care of the rest.
2. Prop up your tabletop. Place the hero where it needs to be.
3. Give it your best shot. Download in Lightroom.
4. First, fix the bland bluish taste. If you change the temperature from blue to yellow, the whole dish is affected. You don’t want the cake to turn yellow so to isolate the cake, use the Mask tool.
5. Once you’ve masked the cake, move the Temp slider to the right until you get the right color of the tabletop, which is white. Adjust the Exposure and Shadows to taste.
   
6. Second, fix the cake. Use the Brush tool next to the Mask tool to cover the whole cake. Adjust the Exposure and Shadows until you get the right consistency.
7. Export the image and turn off the heat from your computer.

Serves you well. Enjoy!

 

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