Cake Talk: Food Porn

Food porn. Close-up images of juicy, delicious food in advertisements.

I realize I'm going out on a limb here, being in the staunchly conservative south where the suggestion of pornography offends many. So I apologize in advance.

But I ran across this photo of the meat pies we made for Kentuck yesterday on their Facebook page and I could not resist.

There are a lot of definitions of food porn...ranging from enticing photographs of food that make you want some, to sensual visualizations of people preparing or eating food.

I started admiring food photography in Gourmet Magazine and Bon Appetit many years ago. Then I graduated to The Culinary Insider. And while at culinary school, I collected many close-ups of food in various stages of preparation. I gotta admit, I was hooked.

We take lots of photos of our cakes at the bakery. Mostly for insurance purposes. To prove that the cake was delivered "as ordered" especially when the customer is not present in the room when we set-up a wedding cake.

I'm not a professional photographer, so the pictures are often out of focus, crooked, too light or too dark, and do not always show off the cake to its best advantage. The only requirement of my camera is to capture the reality of the cake.

Then there are the artistic photos of our cakes and pastries. The first one I really noticed was taken by local photographer Dave Crutchfield, of our cupcakes. I liked it so much it became the cover of our cookbook.

I am always impressed when one of our customers takes a photo of our cake. Sometimes they look so good I cannot believe we actually made the food in the picture.

Here are a few more of my recent favorites...

I had to include a wedding cake. This is not even the entire cake, but it sure makes you want it, right? I actually took this one myself.