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#WFHCafé with Andrew Scrivani, Episode 4: Chocolate Covered Macaroons

Welcome back to the show, Andrew. I'm excited to have you here and excited to learn how to make chocolate macaroons. So we have to distinguish. Hello, everyone. You have to distinguish between a macron and a macaroon, right? Because they're set their different things so that amounting this correct? I think you are somewhere right down the middle. Oh, God. So the French macron is the little almond cake Little Oreo cookie looking thing. And what I'm making is a coconut macaroon, which is basically ah, ball of coconut and condensed milk cooked, baked in the oven. Excuse me and ah, dipped in chocolate. Uh, so we're gonna have a little time when Ah, this stuff goes in the oven. So I'm gonna go over a couple of things also Like what it takes tow to, um, melt chocolate on a on a stovetop. Because I think sometimes people might be confused by that or you've never done it before. Maybe it's a little bit scary. Also whipping. We're gonna whip up some egg whites into so somewhat of ah, like a mar...

shmallow. We kind of meringue that's going to get mixed in with our coconuts and stuff. So um, let me tell you the genesis of why I came up with this one for today. I wanted to do a dessert. I also want to use what I had in my pantry. So I kind of went to the pantry and looked around and said, What's in here that I haven't really used? And it's been sitting around for a little bit. So I ended up having to bags of this stuff, which is this kind of flaked coconut, sugary flaked coconut. So it's not that kind of stuff you would like Sprinkle on your in your granola or if you wanted to put it on, you know, in something else because it's really sweet. It's really designed for baking. So I had two bags of this. I was like, I know what I could make with that. So I kind of put together a recipe for the macro macaroons. Now I'm going to do it. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna go back and forth between pronunciation. No, no, I kind of had it straight in my head. And now for any more, um, eso the only thing I really needed to go out and buy for this was condensed milk. So now if you've never used this stuff before, it's pretty amazing. I remember my my grandmother used to put this in coffee when I was a kid. And I think you also make Cuban coffees and tie coffee is, like, really, really heavy, sweet, really sugary coffees you make with that condensed milk, which is really quite nice. But the other thing you could do with that right in the can is make Gulch a deluxe, which is pretty awesome. You basically caramelized condensed milk, and it basically becomes ultra deluxe. So I had to go out and buy, and uh, can I? I bought one extra, just in case I want to make some caramel sauce. So, um, but I I got that and everything else I had in my pantry had vanilla eggs, salt and then some chocolate chips. So I'm gonna show you. Let me tip you down so you could see what I got going on here so you could see all my stuff here. God, but coconut egg whites, vanilla salt, chocolate chips, and then my condensed milk. And that little deep tells me that my oven is warm so that means we can get started. So I'm gonna go through the process of mixing these up and go through a couple of things. I'm gonna have to move you around a little bit so you could see what I'm doing. But, um, so we're gonna point you down here for a sec. I have some sheet pans Could see me over here. I have some sheet pans lined with, uh, parchment paper. One is for baking, and the other one is for dipping. Once I dipped, um, I'm gonna need that to put them on so that they will cool. And I'm also gonna It started here with a nice, big bowl. Put you down. You could see me. Make sure you could see everything. Yeah. Looks goods, curse rate. Okay, we're going a little more. You good. Okay. So I'm gonna start with my coconut. It's gonna be a little clumpy, so I'm gonna break some of it up with my hands a little sticky. Don't be afraid. It's OK. All right. And what if we have, you know, sweetened coconut at home? That's not this kind of I'm sorry. Remind me was sweet. Sweet. Just a sweet What's the sweetened coconut and unsweetened coconut is, you know, a little bit more versatile. You could use it for your granola. You could bake with it. You could do a lot of things, but it put it on top of things. I mean, some people used to sweeten for everything, but it is quite sweet. So it's not, you know, you know, so So you first thing I want to do is I'm gonna mix in the, uh, condensed milk is very kind of gooey. It's very sugary and thick. Growing up. My my dad used to to make toast with just lather on condensed, no groups eating. So we're gonna mix this through. Then it could sit there for a second while we get through with our other things. So I'm using a rubber spatula and a glass bowl, but you could use a wooden spoon. You could use your fingers. You could use whatever you like to get this kind of mixed through. And I'm also gonna put my vanilla in there. So now almost all of our ingredients are already been putting to play. So see, you could see it's a really simple, really simple recipe you want to give it a good mix because it's going to take a bit to get everything covered in both the condensed milk and to dissipate thea vanilla because it's not a lot of vanilla. So you gotta really getting there. Did you get the bottom and get all that dry ingredients mixed together? Once this is set, it's gonna be nice. Okay. Have you made these before? Cake? I have not. I love them. They honestly are something and any sort of French dessert. I get a little intimidated by and assume it's difficult because French desserts are so delicate and beautiful and rich that there's usually a lot of technique that goes into them. So I just kind of always assumed there was a lot more technique that went into these. Yeah, I mean, that's understandable, but it's Ah, I think when you're making pastry, it's one thing like there's no flour in this. So it's really giving. Sorry. I'm plugging things in here. If you can't see me, I've just duck down to plug in my mixer. There we go. I want to move. Please could see me. All right. So I'm gonna take my egg whites, and I'm gonna put him in here with a little bit of salt. Sprinkle it right in and this is going to get loud. So maybe if you want a mute and or something, but I'm gonna basically dio it's gonna get for me. And then it will start to step in once you get a nice, creamy sort of marks mallory texture to see what your your process here is to get air into in the more air flow here. And if we don't have an electric mixer, is it possible you could you Okay, you can absolutely do this with the whiskey to do it with your with your stand mixer with you could do this with different attachment to the whisk attachment on here. There was a lot of ways to do this. You do it by hand without with with it's very satisfying, but it is absolutely exhausted with this into so one of the tricks that I utilized. Sometimes when I feel like I'm not getting enough air into it, I may blow on it a little, and that actually puts even more influence on my imagination. You It's absolutely possible you can see I'm getting nice and fluffy mouth. Yeah, they talk about when you talk about mixing things you talk about or Oh, yeah, yeah. So when you get to a situation where you are, you're gonna kill you by pulling this out. You pull it up like that and you'll see that it has these tiny little peaks, like it old stick up. And then once you get a really solid firm peak, it'll stand there. So we're gonna try to get people maybe speed up a little, moving it around. Also, hope could be airing there. But you see, it's getting even sicker now, but this is really quite forgiving. It's not like making whipped cream where you're afraid you're gonna break. So you see now to find a kind of peace now, no more. I'm almost where I want to be. So can you over with This is this is a meringue. Technically, you know, we go. Yeah. Can you see that? Yeah. Okay. I'm gonna go for just a minute longer. I couldn't hear you before, Okay? I was saying Is it possible to over Whippet? I think you can. I mean, eventually. When? Once it gets kind of thick and heavy like this. You don't really want to go much further. I'm gonna get one little with you. I mean, I'm gonna I'm gonna call it. I feel like I have good enough. Good enough up firmness to it. And now I'm gonna fold this into here. Now, when I say fold, um, I don't need stirred aggressively, so I'm gonna put it in nice and gently see if nice and airy and like, but put sugar in this, it would get even stiffer. But there's so much sugar in this recipe, it's already got quite enough. So I'm gonna fold this in gently. I'm not good. I'm going to try to keep the air in there as much as I can and fold it in. So I'm gonna kind of just go from over the top like this and press it down softly until all of that for me, Egg white is incorporated into my black into my battery. You were going to say something? Oh, I was going to say so. Technically, are these the whipped egg whites? Is that technically a marine or is a marine marine has toe have sugar in it. Okay, um I was actually considering doing a meringue based dessert. Um, and maybe we'll do that in a later date because I really like making Pavlova. Have you ever made a problem? No, I don't even know what a Pavlova is. Yeah, Pavlova is a meringue cake. Um, which you basically make this kind of march melody stuff. You put it flat on sheep pens like that, and then you bake it and it gets really stiff. And then you put you lay or fruit and cream in between them squashing together. It's amazing. So this is our batter, and it's ready. It's ready to be put onto our she pants. Yeah. Sip of coffee for me. Okay. So you can do this with an ice cream scooper, like one. Like a one tablespoon. I screamed scooper. You know, the one that's about that big? You could do it that way, Or you could do this kind of Quinnell, um, technique where you used a couple of spoons to form a little ball and then you put him on like that. That's what I'm gonna do today again. I'm gonna go a little technique. He on you? Yeah. So I would probably be using my hands. You could do that. But this is super sticky, so it's not there. So I see I made one a little too big, so I'm gonna make this one a little bigger, and you can kind of just give him a little more shape as they go. They're pretty forgiving. A little more. Not a messy, but nice. Take a little off. Just take a little off the top. Yeah, so at this point, the challenges just sort of trying to keep him around the same size. But, you know, these are these air really, um, quite forgiving in that they'll cook through Either way, it's not, You know, there's not a whole lot here like it's not like you're working with raw egg or you're working with dough. I mean, this is basically just a big sugar bomb. You we're gonna put more sugar on it. So is there our macaroons only made of coconut like this? Or can you make them with other ingredients? Or is that what makes a macaroon? I mean, I think that is I think that is kind of what makes a macaroon. But I do know I have seen people make them out of other stuff because obviously, some people might have dietary restrict changes. And, you know, the idea with this is this That's really sweet, you know? Yeah. It says, you know, the texture is great. I mean, have you ever had a Samoa? The girl's cocoa? Yeah, Yeah, yeah, exactly. This is very similar, I think. I mean, ultimately, they're probably the same thing, except that you put caramel on your Samoa. Um, those are super addictive and crazy. Delicious. So I recently learned, or they recently changed the name of the Samoa, but I think they call. I grew up in the Midwest, and we and I was a Girl scout, and we have them, uh, and they were Smilla's, but I think on the West Coast they call them something different. Now I have toe look at Oh, wow, that actually, you know, that sort of rings a bell, and I just don't I don't know for sure, but I think you might be right that the Girl Scout cookies and different regions have different names. Yeah, because all kinds of cookies and stuff that have different names in different parts of the country. So, yes, they're called caramel delight. Okay, so you could see I'm gonna pop these in the oven as soon as they're ready. And then I'm gonna make a make whatever I have left here on the second she pan Because I want to get these in the oven so we can get a move on this sub. This photo shoot we're gonna dio because I really want a photo. I I really want to take pictures of these. I think they're gonna be beautiful. Okay, so I'm gonna just kind of touch up my protect my little, pretty good shapes yet it looks pretty good. I'm gonna get these in the oven. They're gonna take about minutes. Okay? You've been my You've been my I am your car. You've been my timer. So be my timer again. All right? I didn't handle that. Okay, so we're gonna make a few more. But, you know, one of the things I learned when I was doing Kate McDermott's newest book, Which Pie Camp? Which I just wrapped the absolute last picture for the book yesterday. If you looked at my instagram at all you'll see on my story that there was this really lovely layered pie that I had to make because I don't have a food stylist or Kate McDermott right now is that I make it myself, and it came rather good. I was very surprised at myself because it was really, technically hard. And it was something that I was stressing out because it has a graham cracker crust. And when you cut a pie with a graham cracker crust, you have absolutely no what whether no idea whether or not it's actually gonna hold up. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. No. And I needed to get a nice clean slice out of it so I could take a picture of the of the layers because it was on about it was for a chapter on layered pies. So sort of the pressure was on, and I had one shot at it. Um, it actually worked. I'd put a sign up in my refrigerator while it was chilling overnight to my housemates here that if you got near my pie might be penalty of deaths and because I only had one shot at uh and then everybody got some pie at the end, so my empty threats didn't really scare anybody. Okay. All right. We're getting to the end. I think we may be been to more out of this if you really want to taste this right now, just to see what it tastes like. It wouldn't hurt you is there's nothing in it that could make you sick. There's no no egg or anything like that. Okay, so that's that. Those will go in a second when you have seen people may May with something other than coconut. What? What are some replay? Potentially Dio. Uh, what? You know what? I'd have to look it up. I actually just saw one when I was doing a little bit of research on this. When I googled some of that stuff, a few, um, a few of the non coconut versions popped up, but I actually didn't look at it, so I'm guilty. Guilty That I did not do my due diligence on that. That's my job. Is your host I can do that. Well, you're took Excellent. Okay, So I want to show you how to separate an egg. Or at least how I separating egg. So what we could at least have a little bit of Ah, you know, a little technique school of cooking here. I think sometimes people get a little intimidated by doing things like eggs separation, which, you know, you shouldn't. It's not that bad. So I get a good cracking the egg. Then I hold it, and I separated like this, right? So the yolk is still in one side. Now, you can do one of these one of these transfer back and forth kind of routines. You run the risk of popping the ah yoke sometimes because it's a little jagged on the edge. So the other thing that I like to do is just put it in my hand and you actually get a lot more the white off of the yoke. Uh, and then you can take the yoke away. So you now have nice clean. Yeah, they're so but Or you could also do it sort of on your own, like, just straight into your hands, Which is what I've been doing lately is just sort of going right into my hand and letting that letting it run through your fingers. It's kind of gooey and satisfying, and then you have You're perfect. A joke. Jillson makes a really nice picture. Yeah. What kind of fun to play with? Yeah, especially when you don't. Yet. That one looks like a perfect one. That was perfect. I had a couple poached egg disasters this weekend. I was trying to approach some eggs and exactly what you just said. I was trying to get a little of the egg white, all. Yep. So I was pushing it back and forth between two shells and just every time I went to go dump it in the boiling water and got caught, the yolk got caught up Michelle and cracked before it even hit the father. I know. So I'm gonna show you what? So I'm gonna basically recreate what we just made. Except this time, I'm gonna do it with a whisk and see if how long I can until I get, like, sort of. I go back in four. You can clear your almost an old almost immediately start to get for me. And then once you get that, start with I go back and forth. You could get call me, and then I start with you could see it already started. Yeah, for me. Like I said, it's really about how much help back you get air into it. Your timing. Me. I am one really big arm. This is going pretty quickly getting I'm getting a lot of hair on. I'm not starring who need a break. This is the meditative portion of our show where you get to watch me with in two. I wouldn't excluding. Sounds that YouTube. Oh, yeah, it's more. Yeah, it kind of seems like that. This is your all. Some are for the day. All right, So you see, I've got almost to where I was before, and that took maybe 23 minutes. But like I said, you don't really need a mixer if you don't have one. So if you got a whisk, you're gonna be perfectly fine. You'll have some forearm muscles after that and you'll be looking great. Okay, So I want to show you what's next. Which is how to melt chocolate in a double boiler. Basically, if you don't own a double boiler, you don't need one. Basically, all you need is a pot of water and a metal pot. I'm not a metal bowl. You put it on and it's just that heated up. And while locks heating, I'm going to go get my shoulder straps. So you can, uh I can put you on my chest so I will be right back. That sounds good. And they all remind everybody, uh, this is your work from home Cafe. We are alive with country star Bonnie from home into Jersey and And we every Monday at o'clock, we're coming to you with a new recipe. And today we're making chocolate covered macaroons. Macaroons. Ah, and so to rehab. Just finished making the base of our macaroons, Which waas egg white, uh, coconuts and a little Bonilla and, uh oh, in commends milk. Excuse me. So we made those all into little balls. And now Andrew is about to show us how to correctly melt some chocolate that we're gonna drizzle on top. Uh, chocolate has been for meeting something until I actually started working in a restaurant. It was always something that I struggled to do at home because it kind of, um, would just probably something you're gonna teach us right now. But it would always harden and kind of get that Like gray, uh, white uh, sheen on top. And it never looked pretty anymore because I wasn't actually melting it. I was just kind of sticking in the microwave and melting it, and that hardens and creates that. So this is gonna teach us how to keep the chocolate. Ah, beautiful. And not get that kind of weird sheen that tends to happen if you love it. Um, do you know what causes that, Andrew? Actually, when you know if you're you're talking about tempering chocolate, so yeah, by tempering chocolate, you're basically bringing it up to temp. And hopefully what you're achieving in that is that you're gonna let it continue to shine after, um, we don't necessarily. In a situation like this, you don't necessarily have to temper the chocolate. So what we're doing today is we're just going to show you how to appropriately melt the chocolate. Tempering it would require us to monitor it to return a particular temperature, which we're not going to do today, because it's not necessary. And it's next to step that if you're just trying to do these things for the first time, tempering chocolate is not the thing that's gonna build your confidence. Yes, So a double double boilers now nice and hot from the steam of create put my chocolate chips in. I'm using two ounces of semi sweet chocolate ship soda like the one to use as a chocolate chip cookie. Um, and you're gonna see immediately. This is going to start, like just break down and you're not over direct heat. So this is why this works better. Then if you just threw it in the pot, because then you would scald the bottom and it wouldn't melt properly. They would just all stick together and get and seize up. That's something that you watch out for when you're working with chocolate is that if you cook it too fast or on over to high aflame, it's going to seize, and it's just gonna get like, grainy, and it's not gonna be creamy and nice. So this will melt nice and slowly over this double boiler that we created. Remember, use your oven mitten because you will burn your hand if you don't, and using a rubber spatula will help. You kind of get that chocolate off the bottom and keep it moving. Now we may technically be doing this a little too early, but we could always reheat it if we have to. But we don't have. The rooms have been in the oven for about 10 minutes. About 10. Okay, Good. Great. So you were getting a little more broken down here. Ultimately, if you've seen the cover of my book, you know I have a pension for melted chocolate. Yeah. So, in what instance would your temper chocolate persons doing this candy Can you making can because, you know the look of it is really gonna matter. Uh huh. Um, candy is really gonna be the reason now. You could also send this out a little bit of with a little bit of cream or a little bit of milk if you wanted to make it a little bit more liquidy for different purposes. That's totally possible. We may actually come back to it. The more you heat it, the more of the the milk solids from the butter and the chocolate will start toe break down. See, I'm nice and creamy. It is now. Yeah. And why would you do this over? Just copping some chocolate in the microwave. Well, you know, I don't know, because if you really want to cook? Yeah. No. Still getting technique, E. I mean, I think, you know, melting this appropriately to the right. However, you actually feel comfortable melting this down to get to the point where you could dip it, dip stuff in it. I I will absolutely encourage you to do that. But I do ultimately want if you're trying to learn some cooking techniques for me to learn how to do things that if you do decide to take the next step, you want to learn how to do it in a way that if I am gonna temper this chocolate and I want to make it so that it will continue to shine and when you want to learn candy making any of that kind of stuff, you can't do that in a microwave. So this is sort of this is sort of 101 This is all right. This is our entry into Yeah, this is sort of entry level. Get confident and comfortable with working with things like chocolate. And, you know, baking in general is very precise. There's a lot of precision in baking. Yeah, so yeah. You know, using on the you know, using a digital scale. You know, like I use a digital scale for everything. So I just got actually, and I do tend to do Ah, grand measurement s'more, then, um great. You know, ounces for baking because they're more precise s. So I think that actually helps a lot. So I'm gonna leave that right where it is. I may come back to that and just warm that up again in a bit because I want to make sure that off that's going to be loose enough to dip our macaroons in it. And what we could do is I can take a knee here, and I don't know if you can see, but we'll see what we're doing in there. Can you see in there? Oh, yeah, we can see a little bit. Yeah, you could see that a little bit of the liquid is sort of pooling at the bottom and creating a little bit of a base. And when you go to dip these in chocolate, that flat base at the bottom is where you're gonna grab it from the top when they're cooling often dip in writing the chocolate and then set him aside, so that sort of that will be the technique we go through. So all right, I'm gonna take you off my chest here for a second. So put it back on a tripod and I'll remind everybody this is creative. Live TV. This is our weekly show with Andrews Cavani, professional food photographer. Ah, and author. He is in his kitchen in New Jersey teaching us how to create how to make coconut macaroons. Right now we have just, uh we've just melted some chocolate. We have popped our macaroons in the event, and we're just waiting for them to finish crisping up. And then we're gonna dip some, uh, our coconut macaroons into our chocolate. And while we wait just a few more minutes for that, Andrew's gonna show us a new, different techniques on how to set up our kitchen so we can take beautiful photos of these, uh, when we're done cooking them. So again, this is where he's he is all set and ready. Moving. I'm moving you. Yes, and moving. All right. So flipping around, he could see me. There we go there. So I'm gonna sit here for a second, and we're gonna talk about a few things that I've been doing while I'm home in my space without my studio. So using sort of every day things, um, to make my photo studio a little more functional. So a couple of the things that I've always talked about and I always use Are these a clamps? They are. These are great, because what I do is I take pieces of cardboard, and then I can actually attach the A clamp to the bottom so that it will stand up on its own so that when I want to use this as a fill card, perfect. When you don't want to use it as a still card, either make it tall. It stands by itself. I could move it around the table. Really great. Yeah, I get those that are hard words. Are these? Yeah. Any hard work? Still have a clamps? You could get him out of art supply store or hardware store any of any of the above. So the other thing I like to do with these is you can attached then different color paper to them. So, like, for example, I use this one yesterday I just folded it in half, and I put a piece of paper from the printer. I just taped a piece of paper from the printer in it. Just hang it up. It's kind of sloppy and falling apart right now. They used it yesterday, but you basically can. You don't even need the a clamp. If you don't have one, you just sort of put a piece. So I take this piece of paper and here to create, like, a white bounce card. And I put it right next to my pie when I was shooting yesterday, and it was great and like you can get way more sophisticated with this. You get pieces of foam core you can use, you know, you can use ah, black construction paper. You could use white. You know, whatever you want to use, it doesn't matter. It's just it's just a blunt instrument to bounce light back off of your subjects. Now, consequently, sometimes in what I'm finding in this space is I don't have enough shadow. So there are times when I want to use, um, a dark surface. So I have this sort of big sheet of black fabric that I can hang up even on the back of a chair or on any anything like in on the table. I could just put something on the table like a box or something and just drink this over it. What it's gonna do, excuse me, is it's going to create a negative sort of light reflection and create more shadows on whichever side I want. Now I could make this a small as I want. You know, I can make it kind of as big is like a piece of paper and just drape it over something. So it's sort of sitting there and creating this negative. I could use it as a backdrop. If I can hang it in the back, I could use it as a backdrop. I could use it as a table cloth. So if I want to just shoot something against black, there's a lot of uses for just a really good piece of black fabric in your studio. You could cut it into smaller pieces if you really wanted to know. I'm not going to do that today because I'm not gonna cut that one up, but you can use it for a lot of different things that help you create negative as well, so your white bounce can be anything. It's simple. It's some cardboard with paper taped to it. You can use your A clamps just to set them up. You can clip this to the back of the chair. If you shooting on the floor. You can use it a lot of different ways. Anything to hold that in place. You can just take a piece of cardboard. Even just this will work in some way to just give a little bit. You can actually create a little shadow or bounce with with just that all of those sort of just D I Y situation. So, like, even now, right, if you see if I take this off frame, if I remove it, there's a little more light on that side. If I put it in again, out of frame there, I can kind of create a little bit of shadow around my head so you could do a lot of things with just what you have in your house. You don't I mean, I'm a professional photographer with studio full of equipment, and this is what I used yesterday. So, you know, I don't want to bring all my stuff down here. I don't want to bring light stands. I don't want to bring all the, you know, Phil cards and all these other things. I have beautiful light in here. I get what I need out of this space. But sometimes if you just need a little bit of health, that will certainly could be done with, you know, a deal. D I y approach. So So I just want to tell you your at 20 minutes, four minutes, Okay? Yeah, I'm gonna check on him and I'll go check on him. And five because they said 25 to 30. Um, I'm gonna talk about the gear I want to use today to because I'm going to switch it up a little bit. I know that you've watched me over the past three weeks Shoot with this lens, which is my 50 prime 1.2. Um, this is Mike, Sort of prized 50. And then you've seen me with this little compact macro that it's still attached to my camera. Um, what I'm going to do today because this remember now are macaroons are only about that big when they're when they're finished, right? I want to use my 100 millimeter macro, which will get me super close. So I'm gonna be able to fill up the entire frame with that pastry without a whole lot of room around it with that lens without having to get super close either. So I can actually be a little a little bit away from the table. So I'm not influencing the light. And I can take a really good close up with that lens. So we'll talk about that, and I'll show you what that looks like once we get everything out on the table later. Um, the other thing I want to talk about in the same vein as the light bouncing cards and the black fabric is what you're wearing. Now you're wearing a white shirt. Yeah, and you would be a good reflective surface in a studio setting. So if you were shooting a backlit situation like I am, it would be advantageous to be wearing white because you then become your own bounce card. Yeah. No, I never thought of that at all. That's wearing a black. So I'm gonna create a neg with my with my presence. So the closer I get to my subject, the more negative shadowing I'm gonna create. So it's all you know, A lot of times you forget that you could influence the photograph. Like if you're standing in a sunny room wearing a red shirt, you're gonna cast red on your subject. If you're standing in with a white shirt, you're gonna push light back on it. You're standing over the black shirt. You might create some negative, Phil. So everything that when you especially when you're shooting macro, when you're shooting macro lenses and you and you intend to be close to the subject, you intend to be right on top of the table. You need to think about what you're wearing because it's gonna important influence the colors of the light in the room. If that makes totally it does. And it's not something that me, personally I've ever really thought about, uh, when I I'm shooting, Yeah, I mean, for sure. I think there's definitely you know, you don't think about it that much, but why do you see photo assistance always just running around in black? Yeah, because they're trying to not influence the light in anyway. So that's, you know, that's really the best way to do it. Because once the once the gaffer it's set the lighting. And in a particular student studio setting, the last thing you need is somebody in a white shirt walking by and bouncing light on your subject. So, hey, you got your coffee? So that any any questions about any of this you would see if anybody has questions, I'll get my hand exercises in while we're the I Y. Jim. So we have a question when we are working with natural light like you are in your house. And if you don't have, you know, a huge window like you do in yours, um, and say we only have a small amount, you know, a normal a normal sized window. Not like you know. Okay. Florida's feeling. Yeah, sure. Are you sometimes bringing in some non natural light? Are you using a lamp or, um, you know, is it What? What do you suggest if somebody doesn't necessarily have this beautiful lighting in their home? I mean, I think you're talking about his mixing light and mixing light. It's super difficult, because light is a different temperatures. So daylight is somewhere between, like 4000 and 5500 Kelvin. And like the lights in your house, they range. But, you know, depending on the style, most people's home lighting, like sort of ventures into the tungsten range, which is a little warmer and orangey looking. So if you're mixing daylight and tungsten, it would kind of start to look funky. Um, my suggestion would be to push your camera as hard as you can, meaning drive up your I s so number to get the right amount of light into the lens so that you can create the picture you want with the available light you have now even just one window standard daylight in the middle of the day. Most cameras on the market are gonna handle that without a problem. You just have to push it a little further than you might think you would. Okay, So, like in here, let's see. Where am I right now? I think the lens cap off. Let's see what I want to be there. There's no card in my camera. See what happens when you e I will put a card in my camera. Okay, so let's say okay, This is 125th of a second at five point. Oh, aperture 400. And I think I'm a little dark. You could see. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So let's try this. First. I'm gonna put the fill card in. There we go now. It didn't really get much better, so I'm gonna go to 800. I s O with same other settings and the fill card, and that definitely helped. Now, remember, we're shooting a black object against the light. Yeah, but and I can probably pull some of that out in post production, so I wouldn't really need to do much more than that. But let's just for argument's sake, we're still in really good range here. I'm gonna go to 1600 I s O with the Phil card, and now everything is clear. So even Oh, yeah, Even at 1600 I s so which you would think, you know, we're talking. 10 years ago, we'd be shuttering at the thought of driving these counts up to eso. But quite honestly, I've shot this camera without any aerial break up. If you're shooting stuff that primarily is gonna be shown on the Web. I mean, there is no limit. Yeah, it was. It's a 72 D p I image anyway. Yeah, excuse me. So I wouldn't worry so much about the daylight aspect of trying to bring in extra light. I would work on the light you have using Phil cards and using the settings in your camera to push as much light as possible into the lens. You're gonna be much happier with the results. And what if we are shooting on an IPhone or a mobile phone? Um, this speaks to your new class on creativelive, which is about mobile food photography. That's right. The phones are better than the cameras, Believe it or not, in low lying right there, Er, I mean ah, my new one. The IPhone 11 pro has, ah, night mode, and it actually shoots in low light. Really, really well. So I think you have less of an issue with making pictures with an IPhone because it will automatically adjust to the delight in the room, even nightlight like when you're in a restaurant. So I would say I've seen those cameras in a dark restaurant still make a nice picture. So that's less of an issue than with a DSLR. For sure, it's that sort of like, um, you know, it's a no brainer. You can use any light and it'll be fine. I've been shooting with my phone a lot for the instagram stuff. And yeah, I'm really happy with the results. I mean, I'm able to process them a little, You know, you in the mobile class that talk about shooting through light room so that you could use a digital negative file, which is actually a really substantial file. And if you made a great picture with your phone with a DMG and then processed it in light room, some people would be hard pressed to tell the difference between that and a DSLR. Really? Okay, I think so, Yeah. I mean, obviously it's not for all applications, but there are instances like outdoors where it's amazing, you know, it's it's a cool I shot a picture of the moon yesterday. The moon was out in daylight. It was really pretty. And I zoomed in with the zoom lens, and I am. I got a pretty nice image of the moon. I mean, and you know, how hard it is to shoot the moon is really hard because we're moving and you don't realize we're moving. But, you know, we're moving pretty fast. Yeah, a lot of little cat, a little bit of camera shake. So let's go check on our let's go check on our macaroons. Just hit our 30 minute mark, okay? And you could see our chocolate sort of stiffened up a little, so we're gonna listen. Have to loosen that up again. Um, we just hit the 30 minute my Oh, look at that. All right, watch this. All right. So let me put you up here. I'm gonna pull those out, and I'll bring you over and show you what they look like. So these look amazing. So check this out. Oh, wow. Those tools in there that really likes Chris Speed. Yeah. So I'm gonna let them sit for a minute or so. Cool off, because I don't think I can handle them yet. Plus, I have those other ones that are still in the oven, so I'm gonna take you with me. I don't want to leave you. I want to leave you alone. And is it ideal toe have them completely cool before you. You put them in the chocolate. Or is there uh, no temp? You're you're looking for specifically, Um, I know. I just think you cool enough to handle, So the other ones came out there good to. So we're good. I'll show you again because I got some really nice ones with the little crispies on the thought. So these kind of came out nice, too. Oh, yeah, Lose did, too. And I wouldn't expect them to take very long, but they may take a minute or two to cool off because of she panzar hot. But if I could pull off, we could pull it off the sheep pan. Let's see if I could be creative about this. Um, yeah, because probably grab it. She pan and cool a little faster. Oh, yeah. Put him right on the marble here. Cool. All right. That's too hot to touch that, because I would have done that in the past. Please remember to put your oven mittens back on. All right, That worked out. Show you they get out. So yeah, that's not okay. I could probably handle him as soon as this chocolate is melted again. So is so. Is it the egg white that causes it to stay together? Like I would expect that those would have spread out a little bit more. Yes, I like definitely is a binding agent. So these are ready to eat now. Now, we wanted to eat them. We could definitely eat them now. Um, So I'm gonna put some more parchment on these sheet pans so that we could when we dip them in the chocolate will put them over there. So how did we step yourself? I'm gonna put that there. I'm gonna bring this over here, which is still hot. I don't want to burn my hand. Yeah, that's probably not ideal. This is probably more ideal. Here we go. You didn't see what I did. I just put a plate down. Okay, so I'm gonna get you back on my chest again. I know. We're like, rolling all around here today, so hang on a second. I'm gonna get you back on the work from home Cafe Cam over. We're going for a spin. Yeah, I took you for a spin and I put you on here. Have a little This one has a little dial. Where should we just turned? Until it locks on, which isn't so bad. Yeah. How's that? Can you see what I'm doing? Yep. Looks great. Okay, we're gonna turn this back on now. We'll take. It'll take a sec, but it'll loosen up that chocolate again, and then we'll just start dipping. Um, thank didn't loosen up completely. You know, I didn't mean it didn't seize up completely. Which shows you that we did it the right way and would probably want to keep that pretty pretty loose while we're working with this. No. Okay, so we're gonna take one here. I'm just gonna dip the bottom, pull it out. You could see I got this nice chocolate on the bottom. I'm gonna lay it this way so it dries. You see what I did? Yeah. Then you don't want to get it too heavy. Just a quick dip. These are still a little soft. Oh, emergency. Mm. They're breaking on you. Yeah, I broke a little cause it's still a little I'm working a little too fast. That's okay. We'll be all right. You just kind of both So painted a little bit. It might also work at the end of the day is long. It's got chocolate on the bottom, right? That's all that matters. I could probably put him face down on the parchment. It would. It would probably be that big a deal. They'll probably come right off once the chocolate heart hardens. But I want to eat one right away. So and you put the chocolate on the bottom because it's easier to just or I don't know. You know? Look, do it both ways. Yeah, I've seen it both ways. I've seen it. This actually is a little easier. Let's steal both ways. Then we should show you like that one's not so pretty. Yeah, I think it might. It might affect the prettiness. Well, we are. We are a ah, photography show is Well, so yes. So we do care about how it ends up looking, You know that we're not just a photography show. They It tastes delicious and looks delicious. Absolutely. All right, I'm gonna get one of these from over here, and then I'm gonna get a good dip. Oh, yeah, That looks nice. Guard. Yeah, I think we're good. I like I kind of think I like the one like with the chocolate on the bottom. Better. Yeah. I think those look cleaner. How touched the burn yourself. I think I don't I probably don't need this to be on the flame anymore. All right, let's experiment and see what happens if I put it down on the chocolate like that. I'm down with just trying Whatever. Whatever. Here. What? Yeah. You'll works tennis. Yeah, I gotta remember. Keep you center. Okay. I don't try one. I'm actually kind of jonesing to try one. I'm just I'm gonna do like this Dip one and just need it. See, that's the best part about cooking is tasting things as you go along. As expected, there were delicious. Really nice with the chocolate, but really, did you see me drop that? All right, They're really good. Not sticky. Sweet. Which you would think there might be. They're actually just sweet enough there and then with the chocolate. Really nice. Okay, So and I would have to be a using bittersweet chocolate, right? Yes. So I know. I'm sorry you semisweet this time because I like the taste of a chocolate chip kind of flavor. Yeah, and the semisweet could do that. So I think this guy right here is a really nice hero for our picture because he's got this really Krusty beautiful. And I think if I give it a little bit of a kind of careful a careful dipping, my chocolate is Ah, I'm gonna kind of paint this guy. So when you're doing stuff for photography, sometimes you don't do it exactly the way you would do it when you're cooking. So I'm gonna just paint this with chocolate so you can get this kind of city that has, like, a little chocolate base get around the edge a little bit. So it's pretty. Yeah. You could definitely tell that has chocolate I got. And then what? I'm gonna do AIDS. Take a fresh piece of parchment and bring it over to the studio table, which is my dining room table. I like the shoot pastries and different things on parchment. It makes it makes it really pretty. All right, let's get a couple more now for background. These other guys kind of a probably decent dry. Now bring them over in the squash it down a little bit so that you could see that there's chocolate underneath. Most of this stuff won't stick to the parchments. That'll be good. All right. And if you were gonna if you're gonna prop this with something besides the macaroons, what would you dio? Maybe some chocolate. Yeah, like a drizzle like you can. Actually. I've done these two way you put him. I've done. Maybe you guys, I'm talking to this camera. Hold on a second. My hands are dirty. You talk with dirty hands. Um, I've done them way. You put him out on the sheet pan on the parchment and then drizzled the chocolate like this. So actually, you know what? I probably have enough chocolate, but left in here. Where? If I get it liquid again, we could do that back to with this other set. So let's shoot those. Then I'll come back. I'll make a few with the drizzle, and then we'll shoot those. So why don't we go over and shoot the ones we have? That's good. It will take. Take you with me here. Everyone's getting hungry that everyone wants to make these now. Oh, I hope you do. If you got these ingredients, it's worth it. Okay, Here we go, and you're still on my chest here. So I'm gonna get you off here and go for I'm not gonna make you spend this time. I'm just gonna hold. Yeah, and I almost remind everyone this is creative like TV. And we are in New Jersey at Andrews Cavani's home. He's taking a century of kitchen to teach us how to make a new recipe every Monday at 12 p.m. Pacific time. And then he shows us how to take beautiful photos of it. Today we are, ah, making chocolate covered coconut macaroons, and he is setting the table for us to set up the picture. Could you see both of those cameras? Okay. Yep. Okay, cool. So I have a nice kind of set up here where I feel like this one that I identified as my hero is at the front, and, you see, it doesn't look like a whole lot here, but when you're in a macro lens, everything that's back here just kind of becomes atmosphere. So are you going to start with the 50? Um, the 50 macro, just to get a baseline is to where I want to be. Okay, I'm actually a little bright at 1600. But what I'll do is I'm gonna add a little aperture to this, cause I want to get as much clarity as I can. Yeah, it's okay. I'm gonna move out closer to the window because I feel like I don't have enough shimmer machine. So now I have a little bit of light bleed coming in out of the top right corner of the shot. And I'll show you now because you could see that light lead coming in, which I really like. Are you frozen? You know I'm here. Okay, so it is nice, low angle. I could see the shimmer on the chocolate. I could see that light lead coming in. And I have a little bit of atmosphere with the other ones happening. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Okay. And then maybe even from the top, you get something a little more graphic. This is also dark now, so I'm gonna have to back off on the We're gonna back off on my aperture. That's too bright. So you could see to, like, from the top, you can get a nice Maria there, so I'm gonna switch about to the other lens now to show you the difference I can get with this 100 millimeter. Mac Rowland's and I'm really, really close now filling the whole frame and then everything in behind it really falls out pretty considerably. So you could see that the difference. Oh, yeah. Oh, wow. That is a big difference. Makes a big difference with the with the fall off in the back that the depth of field is considerably changed when you move it and you get really close to it a little soft. You have to be careful with these lenses because you do get a lot of camera shake because it's a longer lens. So it's ideal if you have. Ah, Tripod could be on. Oh, yeah. Wow. Right. That's beautiful. Yeah. So, like, you can also come in from the sort of a 3/4 angle, which is nice, too, because you kind of get the shape of them a little bit more. Yeah, Yeah, I see that. Yeah, and that's just just coming up. Just ever so slightly above you could see him focusing on that one hero cause he got that nice color and that kind of odd, like, odd little shape to him. It's a really nice hold on coming back here. Were very all right. I'm gonna go back to the stove. I'll bring you with me, Okay? Because I wanna try to do something. Let me see if I could put the senator another way where you can see what I'm doing. Well, you could see me. I could talk to you while I'm doing this because you know what I'm doing. Um, I'm also gonna bring some of these over there on a fresh sheet of parchment so that when I come back with a drizzle Aiken, drizzle the hot chocolate over the but we'll be right back. You could see me on the other camera. Get those other ones. Is it really pretty? You can see all that beautiful natural light you have in your house. Yeah, this is is pretty, pretty special today. We got some really nice light today. Hey, I got a couple more that could look good on there, and then we'll see how much. Okay, so I'm gonna keep this up again. I'm actually gonna grab a little bit more, have some right here, grab a little more meltdown. A little more chocolate when I throw a little bit of cream in there, too. So it's nice and loose. And I picked this up off the floor before I step on it. Just a tiny bit of cream just to help loosen it up a little bit. Your outing, the cream this time around just because we're trying to drizzle it right? Exactly. I want to make it more liquid so the cream will help break it up and liquefy it a little bit. And this should be fun. How we doing on time? We are at 105 actually. Really? Yeah. Wow, about that. I thought we'd be under No, no, this has been This is then you had a lot of interesting questions or just think that I have kind of come up that help us figure out how toe take better pictures at home. Yeah. I needed to get my contraption off. I was getting a little uncomfortable. Okay, we're I'm kind of hurrying this. Oh, we help it. My stove was lit. I'm like, why isn't this melted? So I had a little more cream. Just help it along. That's just regular cream or milk or happening It's regular cream like regular heavy whipping cream. All right. And this will break down pretty quick. Now is the top. Okay? All right. We're almost there. Are you ready to make cheesecake? I am. I'm excited. I have everything but the coconut, but that I think I order the coconut through. Yeah, I think that's the thing, too. With some of these dry goods that you know that you can actually order online. You know, it's not a stressful if you don't want to go to the market right now. Yeah. Stand herbal. Um, I have to go to the market because a lot of the orders and deliveries from in this area have been sort of suspended because it's so busy that hasn't unfortunately haven't been able to get a home delivery in about a month. Yeah, that's what I have a couple friends and brother still in the city in New York. And you know, it's taking them weeks. They put in an order in 10 days later, they're gonna get it potentially and yeah, they I just had a friend drive out. She drew about toe this big turkey farm just north of the city and bought a bunch of turkey meat and stash. Well, you know, the farms. Ah, couple of the people I'm friendly with that are out on the east end of Long Island. Have only been shopping at the local farms because trying to get into the few markets that were there and trying to get Yeah, it's chaos. It's dangerous. It's just not It's not worth the trouble And that the farmers markets have been super helpful and obviously really grateful for the business. All right, I think we're ready. I got a nice got a nice loose chocolate here. I think it's gonna hold up pretty nice. Going to get a spoon for some drizzling and remember to wear your glove. All right. So I'm gonna bring you over first and can you see? Is that good? Okay. Coming back with the chocolate right off the hunt. And can you see me here? We're good. Yep. All right, here we go. That looks so good. Are sorry trying to make some sort of pattern, or you just kind of going I'm just kind of going zigzag now using. But I'm also you know, when you think about shooting like this I'm also thinking. About what? What? The sheet. What it looks like Not just on the cookie, but also on the on the catchment paper on the part. Yeah, because I want to see like that those zigzag squiggles, you know? Yeah, totally. Okay, coming back. Now check yourself. I'm gonna go back to 50 prime now, because I want to shoot this from overhead and see all these squiggles and stuff and no, only just make one correction, and I think I'm good. So look Well, no. Well, there we go. They're ago. Oh, wow. That looks beautiful. So those came pretty nice and those little squiggles and stuff on the chocolate, so I mean, this lots. You can dio to be creative with this. Now, me personally, this looks beautiful, but I'm gonna want more talk it on my macaroons. It's it's more about styling. Uh, look, and I'm gonna go dunk those in again. Yes, I completely understand. So, um, there we have it. All right. We have made our couple of different styling choices, different dips of chocolate, drizzles of chocolate. Um, we still have some unanswered questions. That about tempering chocolate, which I will cancer next week. Uh, I'll get you some more practical info. If you are interested in taking that next step and making that chocolate continue to shine, um, we're gonna continue the tradition of eating on camera. We're getting lots of of comments saying you're making everyone hungry. We have multiple people who are gonna try this for dessert tonight. Um, PICO on Twitter is asking us to make ravioli or gnocchi sometime soon, which I think are very good ideas on. And Sue Desa asks, how do you have any other chips? Like besides chocolate chips that you might use as a topping on these? Sure. Um, you can use dark chocolate, and some people like that. I have a whole bag here full of different types of chocolates. Okay, so this one is I got some bittersweet chocolate. Um, that's a white chocolate. We'll contact what's in this bag. I saved them because I don't always use all of them. So there is a lot of times when I'm just using whatever's on whatever is available, because I have a lot of leftovers, so Okay. All right. Well, one last question for you before we sign off. Okay. Um Bob. More craft is wondering when you're using a macro lens. Do you have a preference between auto focus and manual? Yeah, I tend to use the auto focus pretty regularly because I trust them on these cameras. I didn't manual focus lenses as well, but I I tend to trust the auto focus as long as you're putting your focal point in the right spot. The spot you wanted in, Um and obviously you should check your exposures in between frames. But I do trust it. Yeah. Okay. Great way to start getting a flurry of questions as everyone saw the after pictures. They're looking so good. Um, all right, well, thank you so much, Andrew. This was a fun one. We will be posting this recipe. We have multiple people asking for the recipe. So Andrew will send it to me after we're done with this episode. And we will give it up on social media for you guys to follow along and make this for dinner. And again, this is the work from Home Cafe. Andrew will be joining us again next week, every Monday at 12 PM, with a new recipe and some new tips on how to shoot mouthwatering photos