Spiced nutty apple-pear cake
Pretty bundt cake
I made this pretty moist and delicious bundt cake this afternoon. It came out of the oven around 4.30 pm, then had to cool and by the time I wanted to take a photo there was no light left whatsoever. That meant having to wait either until the next day or find an alternative solution. I still had this one daylight lamp that I took out of the studio at some point, used once, didn’t like it and tossed it in a corner to get dusty. Enough with the lazy and comfortable daylight! Time to get cracking on some serious stuff.. 
I’ve received many a question from people desperate to find out how to work with lighting in the night or for those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, in the wintertime when light fades after 3 pm. I’ve written something about it before which you find here but thought I could do a little more research myself so why not share? As I said; I never use this lamp as it’s just not the same but in case of emergency, you would have to do with what you got right? So for today I dusted of my daylight lamp, took it into our kitchen and started moving it around.
Position of the lamp
As you can see I positioned the light to come from the right and back and from above a little bit. The lamp has 5 separate bulbs I can turn off individually, so I turned three of and left two burning as it was far too bright, causing burnout and heavy shadows. With a little less light it started to look a little better. I had only one light, so you can see that there is quite a bit of shadow in front of the cake. In order to fill that up a bit I used a silver reflector (you can also use foamboard, aluminiumfoil or something similar) to bounce a bit of light back to the front of the cake. In the two photos below you can see the difference with or without the reflector.
With or without reflector
You can tell that there is a big difference here. You can still tell that these are shot with artificial light but the result is acceptable and you can actually use this. Now what is most important I find when working with lights is the direction of the light. That is also true for daylight but that can be a bit more forgiving. I’ve taken two shots where I changed the position of the lamp and see what happens.
Ok first of all; what I like, might be something else from what you like, so it’s in the end all personal preference but to me the photo on the right is boring and lacks something. I turned the light more towards the table coming more from straight above almost (not quite) which made the light a bit flatter and shadows less pronounced.
I will be doing more tests with other lights that anyone would have in their home. Just to see what the issues are and how to possible solve those (or not). These lights are the easy ones since they are daylight balanced and need limited tweaking when it comes to color. In general for shooting at night, it is extremely helpful to use raw instead of jpeg. It gives you more control over the white balance so you can correct it later where needed. For now I will leave you with this delicious bundt cake!
Apple pear and nut bundt cake
Yield: 8-12
Prep Time: 15 mins
Cook Time: 1 hr
Total Time: 1 hr, 15 minutes
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup dried cranberries
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon nutmeg (freshly grated)
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1 cup light brown sugar (packed)
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks, softened)
- 3 eggs (large ones)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 pears (peeled, cored and cut into small pieces)
- 2 apple, Golden Delicious (peeled, cored and cut into small pieces)
- 1 cup Mixed nuts (coarsely chopped)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Directions:
| In a small bowl put the cranberries with a bit of warm water and let them soak for at least an hour. Drain, discarding the water and set aside. Position rack in the middle of an oven and preheat the oven to 180 C. Lightly butter the bundt tin, then dust with flour, knocking out the excess. |
|
| In a large mixing bow or bowl of electric mixer, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and salt. Add brown and granulated sugars, butter, eggs and vanilla. Using electric mixer, beat on high speed, scraping down sides of bowl with rubber spatula as needed, until batter is pale and smooth, about 3 minutes for handheld mixer and 2 minutes for standmixer. Stir in apples, pears, nuts and cranberries. Spoon into prepared pan and smooth the top. | |
| Bake until a wooden pick or skewer comes out clean when inserted into the center of the cake. About 1 hour. Cool cake in pan on a rack for 10 minutes, then invert and unmold onto rack and cool completely. Cake can be made up to three days in advance and stored at room temperature wrapped tightly in plastic wrapp | |
Recipe from Epicurious
Appetizer
Asian
Bread
Breakfast
Desserts & other sweets
Healthy
Awesome photos. Thank you for the tip with the lamp and I love the wooden “bloc”. Where did you get it?
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Simone (junglefrog) — February 5th, 2012 at 14:40
Ah yes my wooden block; it’s officially an old Chinese butcher block which is transformed into a sort of table/chair. We bought it at Het kabinet, which is a furniture store in Bunnik
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The cake looks incredible… I can nearly smell it. And I love the tree trunk!!
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Simone (junglefrog) — February 5th, 2012 at 14:50
Haha… I love that treetrunk too.. Although I never thought of it as a treetrunk..
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A divine looking and sounding cake! Your wood block/tree trunk is so great.
Cheers,
Rosa
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Simone (junglefrog) — February 5th, 2012 at 14:54
Thanks Rosa! It was indeed delicious!
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Great post, and great advice. I am so frustrated with the waning light these days. I would never have guessed that your photos were taken in artificial light, I am inspired! And your cake looks amazing, as always.
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Simone (junglefrog) — February 5th, 2012 at 14:56
Thanks so much Sue. And yes that disappearing light can be quite frustrating. Thankfully there are a few options out there that are easy to use!
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Thank you SO MUCH for the photo tutorial. I mostly use a daylight lamp as well (not as well as you, sigh). as always, stunning photos!
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The light has stretched a little bit here – it is still dark by 6:00pm for another month though. This is such a great post Simone. I think, because I have shop lights, I need to kill my kitchen lights to make them ‘work right’ . We are entering in to a few weeks of photo shots for the book and a friend of mine is coming to stay for a few days to help. Can’t wait to get this started and finished!
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delicious combination of flavours lovely post
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The rustic effect of the wooden block is amazing. The cake looks really moist. Page, bookmarked…I will try this at home.
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Simone (junglefrog) — February 7th, 2012 at 18:22
You should… It’s worth it!
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Aside from the cake looking absolutely scrumptious and one that would make JP – apple and pear lover – go nuts (no pun intended), the photos are gorgeous! These tips are all helpful and it is fascinating to watch you through the process. Now if I had the space and cool background woods like you do…
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I always use off-camera flashes for my pictures. My schedules varied so much that I can’t rely on day light, unfortunately. Your tips are great. I just re-read your lighting post and I can use a couple of those tips in the future
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I shoot with a bee light diffused through an umbrella at night. Works great!
Simone, the bundt looks fantastic! I wish I would have some for breakfast.
Greetings
Kirsten
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Your spiced apple & pear nutty Bundt cake looks fabulous, beautiful & what a great mini tutorial!
Much appreciated too!
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Although the photos are gorgeous, because only a seasoned pro with a beautiful eye can make an artificially lit photo look great, as you mentioned, no matter what, they still will look artificially lit. Then again, maybe I need one of those lamps that you have? That pear and nut bundt looks phenomenal!! I wish you lived next door and took all my artificially lit photos for me
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Simone (junglefrog) — February 9th, 2012 at 19:05
Well thanks Lisa..
I do agree they look very artificially lit… Although having said that; if I use my studio lights I bet you would not see the difference that easily but these lamps are something else… I’m gonna try a few different things, see if I can get better results! I think the result will look more natural when using speedlights off camera. We’ll see!
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Oh that cake looks astonishingly moist and fruity!! I have to agree that light is the biggest challenge in the Northern hemisphere, especially if you have a day job and have to shoot later when the sun is long gone. Great tips on working with natural light – and interesting how your light shows the limitation of the Lowe Ego’s – you just can’t get that elevation. Great shots.
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Simone (junglefrog) — February 9th, 2012 at 18:57
I never even thought about the fact that the lowel’s can’t be raised easily… I hate the light to come from the same level when it’s artificial lights. I’m gonna try and use my speedlights next I think. have never really used them off camera like that, so that’s an interesting experiment!
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Hmm, I should have paid more attention to this post. I struggled and struggled so much with shooting a marble bundt cake. Gosh, it’s hard. Still need to see my results. I might post about it and then link to this post with your tips.
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I baked this cake tonight. Yum yum. I used only 1 1/4 cups sugar instead of 2 and less nutmeg. It’s wonderful. So light.
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Simone (junglefrog) — March 3rd, 2012 at 23:29
Tastes good doesn’t it? I so want to make this again too!
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Just made it
I jazzed it a bit with a cup of plain yogurt and less sugar, plus I substituted the cranberries for sultanas (just ran out). It was amazing!!! The family extra happy, begged me to make some more.
Thanks so much for the ideas
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Simone (junglefrog) — March 3rd, 2012 at 23:29
Thanks Georgiana, I love this cake too!
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