Its a whole lot easier to photograph food than my son. With him, I expect a natural looking smile for an unnaturally long time. He has to hold the pose when I fumble through the various modes and settings. By the time I get it right, his eyes would have a murderous look and the smile would be frozen. So let’s thank God that the pan cakes don’t mind the long wait while I fiddle with my camera.

When it comes to food photography, there are good days and bad days. On a good day, picking the right kind of bowl, the perfect background and the placing of the props are a breeze. The picture is in perfect focus and its just happiness all around. But on some other days, there is no doing things right. For a long time, I blamed it on not having good wooden backgrounds. But then I had the backgrounds and I could still see no improvement in the photos. Then, I knew the answer – cloth napkins, of course! So all my energy was concentrated on buying napkins for a long time….now I have more napkins for the blog than I have clothes for myself. Yet not much improvement when it comes to photography :D.

The thing is, the camera is just a tool. Its the photographer who composes the picture. Unless I practice again and again until I am consistent with the output, its never going to work out….not for all the napkins in the world!!

I was looking at my old posts to re-do the pictures and surprisingly, I find that I am happy with most of them. The pictures aren’t great, but they make me happy. And that’s all that matters.

Well, I haven’t decided yet whether I am quite happy with the pancake pictures or not, but I can tell you for sure that I was happy with the pancakes! 

Recipe adapted slightly from: The Perfect recipe for losing weight and eating right

Ingredients:

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/3 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/3 cup old fashioned oats
• 1/3 cup corn meal
• 2 Tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 2 cups butter milk (or milk + buttermilk in any ratio to get 2 cups of liquid)
• 2 eggs
• 2 tablespoons oil
• 1 teaspoon  vanilla
• sliced bananas for the top
• butter for greasing the pan

Method:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients from flour to ground nutmeg in a big bowl.
2. Whisk the eggs with oil and vanilla. Add it to the buttermilk (and milk if using).
3. Pour wet ingredients into the dry flour mix. Use a whisk to mix everything until you don’t see any dry lumps.
4. Heat a skillet and brush it lightly with butter. Add 3 tablespoons or 1/4 cup batter and carefullty add the sliced bananas carefully on top of each pancake. I prefer to wait for a minute or two for the pancake to set a bit before adding the banana slices. That helps the pancakes not to spread out more because of the slices.
5. Once the bottom is cooked, flip the pancake and cook until the top turns golden brown. Cook in batches or one at a time. Serve with syrup and fruits.

This goes to Cooking from Cookbook Challenge Group.