Friday, August 28, 2015

INSTAGRAM FOOD PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP BY PHONE

THAT'S DELICIOUS!

iPhone pic collage by Kreetta Järvenpää www.gretchengretchen.com

First time ever I will be teaching with talented cook Meri-Tuuli Lindström a food photography workshop by phone. Yes, you heard right - we are photographing food by phone. 

This workshop is part of Helsinki Design Week 2015. It will happen on Saturday 12.9. On the same day we have open studios and exhibition in our workspace Työhuone ovi 10. You can find us from HDW programme here.

This year's Helsinki Design Week theme is Time Machine. In our food photography workshop we are going back in history for quite a few decades to 1950's and 1920's. We annouced the workshop some days ago and it's already full. We decided to have 10 people in maximum.

But if you think it would be nice experience, please write me an e-mail to kreetta.jarvenpaa@gmail.com and let's see if we have a chance to arrange another one in near future. You can find my Instagram feed here.


Have a lovely weekend!

xoxo
Kreetta

Sunday, August 16, 2015

SWEET PERFECT BLUEBERRY

GLUTEN AND DAIRY FREE BLUEBERRY CAKE

gluten and dairy free blueberry cake photo by Kreetta Järvenpää www.gretchengretchen.com

In my dreams we live in such climate that there are fresh berries and fruits all year round. Well we don't. But at least we have few weeks berry season and for example we can go to forest and pick some blueberries. This year there are a lot of them. They are very healthy and the taste is perfect. We want to save a lot of blueberries in freezer to enjoy their taste during  dark winter mornings.

gluten and dairy free blueberry cake photo by Kreetta Järvenpää www.gretchengretchen.com

This cake is totally gluten and dairy free. The izing on the cake is made of coconut cream and icing sugar. I wrote recipes for you but if you have read any of my recipes, you know I make things a bit more about than exact. Of course baking is much more precise combared to cooking.


SPONGE CAKE BASE

3 eggs
1 dl sugar (plentiful) 
1 dl potato starch
almost 1 tsp baking powder


Whip the eggs and sugar until the dough is fluffy and light. Add carefully dry ingredients. Bake in oven in 225 C degreees about 12-18 min. You can use baking sheet paper that it is very easy to remove the ready cake base from the baking dish.

MERINGUE

2 egg white
1 dl sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp plain vinegar
1 tsp potato starch

Whip egg whites and sugar until they are stiff and glossy. Mix other ingredients carefully. Spread meringue dough on the baking sheet paper in shape you want. Bake in 120-100 C degrees about 1 hour. Baking time depends on how thick the meringue is. I had very thin so the time was about 1 hour. If you want to leave your meringue soft inside it means less baking time. Why I use potato starch and vinegar is because the meringue will not be too hard and it will split nicely with spoon.

SUGAR IZING

Ingredients are coconut cream and izing sugar. It depends on how much you need it but I begun with 1/2 dl coconut cream and started adding the izing sugar until the mix was nicely firm.

SOYA CREAM

I used almost ready soya cream from the shop. It takes only few minutes to whip the cream. I added some sugar and vanilla extract to achieve nicer taste.


gluten and dairy free blueberry cake photo by Kreetta Järvenpää www.gretchengretchen.com

BUILDING A CAKE

I moist the cake base with water. Cake will be too sweet if you use juice etc. But maybe a drop or two of rosewater won't do any harm. 

I used soya cream and fresh blueberries inside the cake. I decorated the cake with coconut izing sugar mix. If you want to have really sweet cake you can use the mix more inside the cake. I put the meringue top on the cake. Finally I decorated the cake with fresh blueberries and lemon balm leaves. I put the cake to fridge expecially because of the sugar izing. Give a bit time to the cake that it will have more balanced taste. 

I already miss the summer and all the fresh fruits, vegetables, berries you can have then. That's why I've been planning to make some preservation in old-fashioned way. I'll get back to it later this autumn.

xoxo
Kreetta
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