Caramel Apple Walnut Cake

There are several important components to a baking blog.  A desire to want to do it is a really good start, followed by amazing recipes and stories to accompany them.  Then there are the photographs.  I can put my all into a recipe and tell you every detail about making it, how wonderful it is and looks and tastes, but if you can’t see it, you’re probably not going to make it.  I know I pretty much never make a recipe that doesn’t have at least one photograph with it unless I’ve seen it demonstrated on TV or elsewhere.  It’s too hard to guess how things are supposed to look, too stressful to wonder if your end product looks like the one the recipe creator ended up with, and baking should never be stressful.

Here’s the problem with photographs: they’re surprisingly hard to take.  Clearly it’s not hard to snap some pics with your camera; the hard part is making them look good, making them appeal to the reader, making you, my wonderful readers, want to stop right then and there and make the recipe because it looks so good.  Truthfully, I thought I was doing pretty well.  But then my photographs kept getting rejected over and over again from various food websites designed to bring more traffic, particularly people interested in baking, to my blog.  Photographs I thought looked pretty good: Rejected 🙁  It has been disheartening, but I finally had one accepted.  It was the Vanilla Fudge if you’re interested.  That was a great recipe.

But another thing about photography is it’s easy to improve.  Baked goods don’t photograph well when artificial lights are on, particularly those directly above said baked goods.  Natural light is the best.  Shadows are killers.  Getting above the baked goods by standing or kneeling on a chair helps prevent this.  Background is important.  This is one I haven’t quite figured out yet.  You have to get close enough to see the detail of the baked good but not too close to have it look messy, out of focus, or have nothing else in the photo other than the end product.  Another tough one to figure out.

I am constantly critiquing my own photos and trying crazy hard to make them better.  And I probably always will be.  For now, I’ll just be happy when those crazy food sites accept some more.  Of course, I hope you all enjoy my photos and they make you want to bake whatever recipe you’re looking at.  And if you have any photography tips, feel free to leave a comment.

I certainly hope the photos of this Caramel Apple Walnut Cake make you want to whip it up because it’s delicious and really quite easy to make.  A dense and moist cake filled with tons of apples and some walnuts is made even better by a rich caramel sauce.  It’s not traditional caramel; instead it’s much easier to make and still very tasty.  As you know one of my favorite and rare treats is warm cake straight from the oven.  This can be served at room temperature, but it’s much better either hot out of the oven or re-warmed.  Regardless of how you serve it, this is a gooey, rich cake that almost makes my chocolate cravings disappear.