I love food photography. Wait, what I should say is that I love really good food photography. But photography is a skill and an art form that requires you to have not only time, but the vision to make food come to life. Like everything else in my food journey, I have a trail of evidence dragging behind me to show how much I have learned, and food photography is no exception. While I still have a ton to learn, simply buying the right camera made a huge difference in my photography. Frankly I have no idea why I waited so long to buy an SLR with a nifty fifty lens, but I did…and when I did sunbeams shot out of my ears and even burnt toast looked amazing (yes, I burn toast… and sometimes I scrape it off with a knife, please don’t tell my children). Usually photography is a solo effort where I am chasing daylight, asking my family to “hold this”, “eat this”, “laugh”, “look at me”, “stand there” until we are all exhausted by my effort to get the right shot, and then more so when I start asking them to look at nearly identical photos and pick their favorite. But on a recent visit from London, my Aunt Jane stood on the decking in our Washington home and watched me set the stage for my Strawberry Chocolate Pie, and wasted no time getting involved.
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Like watching someone slowly savour a spoonful of your cooking, having someone embed themselves in your food styling is intimate on a level words fail to express. The experience left me utterly appreciative and satisfied. We laughed, we shuffled objects around, we toyed with staging ideas, we found icing sugar on our shoes and we bantered over the photos. Food, even without tasting it, created a memory; I will never look at a Strawberry Chocolate Pie without thinking of that shared moment with my Aunt Jane.
Of course we ate the pie too…. Usually I make this pie with raspberries, but sweet strawberries were everywhere in May and it will most certainly be made again. While this fridge pie may look complicated, the steps are simple and take very little time…it is the waiting that will kill you, not the effort. This pie makes a standard size pie that served 6-8 people.
Image may be NSFW.
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Ingredients
- Short crust or traditional pie crust
- 3/4 cup of chopped milk chocolate
- 1/2 cup of heavy whipping cream
- 1 tablespoon of unsalted butter
- Pinch of salt
- 3-5 cups of fresh strawberries
- Icing sugar for garnish
Instructions
- Blind bake the pie crust and allow it to cool while you make the chocolate ganache.
- Using a double boil, heat the cream, and then add the butter and salt before folding in the chocolate.
- Remove it from heat once the chocolate starts to melt and then stir until it begins to look smooth and creamy.
- Fold the chocolate ganache into the pie crust and allow it to cool in the fridge for an hour.
- Once cool, thinly slice the strawberries and arrange them across the top of the ganache working your way from the outer crust to the center.
- Lightly dust with icing sugar and garnish with a sprig of mint to add color before serving.
Notes
Coryanne Ettiene | KitchenLivingWithCoryanne.com | 2014