Day 5 - Queen Cupcakes

Here we have a Queen Cupcake - a hyrbid of the batter from Nigella's How to be a Domestic Goddess with the sultana concept from the Edmond's cookbook. It's the Nigella's cupcake recipe with some sultanas added. It looks like a scone but tastes sweeter.

Photographer's notes:
I wanted to go for a very English tea set-up. While Jess does have a suitable tea set I was horrified to learn that we didn't have any doilies. I also couldn't find a tea tray. I started out with 3 whole cupcakes on a saucer with the teapot and tea cup in the background. This looked far too busy and didn't actually show any of the sultanas. After a few attempts I cut the cupcake in half, added a sultana, and ditched the saucer.Things were starting to look good. With a bit more tweaking I managed to get some steam in the tea cup. This was achieved through pouring boiling water into the tea cup and using an external flash to backlight the steam as it rose out of the teacup. The finished product is a combination of 2 exposures. The dominant exposure is lit by the house lights and provides everything except the steam. The secondary exposure is the steam alone illuminated by the external flash. Everything else in the secondary exposure was well underlit to the point of appearing black. This made life easy in photoshop as the black ended up acting as an alpha channel leaving only the steam. In the end I was glad that we didn't have a doily or a tea tray, they would have added more unnecessary clutter and lead to a lot more mucking around.