From the Box to Camera Front — Instant Cranberry Muffins!

There is one thing both my mentors agree on: The more processed/commercial, the better (because they load the thing with so much preservatives, it actually helps us food stylists with the “fresh” look). Of course, this depends on what you’re talking about, but I decided to just buy something off the shelf (man, will my pastry prof kill me for doing this, but the end justifies the means on this day since i was prepping other stuff for the shoot). And so, I went with a Cranberry-Orange loaf mix and baked it into a muffin pan (the recipe just told me to add oil, eggs and water and that was it!), I mixed the mixture a bit, put the mixture into greased muffin pans and baked it in a Blodgett convection oven (and it only took about 10 minutes vs the package’s 35 minutes or more). Despite the circulating air in my oven, the muffins came out beautifully and I easily placed them in a plastic container for transport to the studio.

Since Mye has been talking about doing a setup with her milk bottle, we went for the “breakfast look”. She made a custom straw with the stripes, that look pretty good in the background (although I’m not sure if it actually usable for drinking because of the thickness). So i picked out the most domed muffins (although a lot of them looked really homemade) for the ones on the plate and did a fork split open for the one we were showing the cross section, this gave my muffin a better dimension vs. just cutting it. The crumbs made it look like someone already took a bite out of the muffin for the more — “natural” effect.

I think this one worked pretty well and it was edible too! Another good take Mye! 🙂

Photos by Mylene Chung of Photokitchen