desserts, lately

Mark and I have been making desserts almost weekly this summer, most of which we’ll create stories for on Snapchat and then post on Instagram. The seasonal fruits and flowers found at the markets these days are hard to resist! And I’ve taken advantage of my free(er) time to work on photo and food styling skills. We’re not food bloggers – every project takes a long time to set up, style and document – and we’ve quickly realized that you could just do this full time if food blogging was your thing. But it’s been fun to devote some time every week to fun food and Mark gets to make something other than cookies (ha!).

The camomile that we bought at the market awhile ago went a long way. We made ice cream (seriously, the most exquisitely delicate flavor) and this simple dessert pictured above – poached apricots in a vanilla camomile syrup. We still had extra camomile left over to dry for tea. Coincidentally, I’ve now seen camomile growing in people’s front yards in our neighborhood (never noticed before!) and I’m wondering if I can grow them in pots next Spring on our balcony.

Summer wouldn’t be summer without berries and we as soon as we saw strawberries, gooseberries, currants and blueberries appear at the market, we knew we had to make a strawberry shortcake (with a tarragon buttercream) and fruit tarts with creme chiboust. Berries are so pretty to work with. I’m next on the lookout for some fresh figs.

If you follow me on Instagram, you may have noticed that I’m playing a lot with flowers the past few months – styling them on food and arranging them collage style on paper. I’ll post about the process and concept behind this new series soon.