Last week I had a couple days set aside to do some testing in the studio. Testing days are laid back, but being the Type-A that I am I still have an agenda to accomplish … with the luxury of being on my own schedule. Last week’s agenda? Testing a fake ice cream recipe.
There’s a certain amount of ingenuity and resourcefulness about photography that I kinda like. OK, I actually crave it, a lot. All my life I’ve been a tinkerer. I get it honestly from my parents who are tinkerers and encouraged my brother and me to tinker by taking apart random things and build whatever we dreamed up in our heads.
My dad grew up on a farm so he learned to tinker and be resourceful out of necessity. Suffice it to say that growing up on the farm didn’t offer the conveniences of just running down to the store and buying what you needed … hardware stores and money to purchase items were scarce in the day. To this day he’s off the chart with inventing and constructing crazy ideas he has in his head. See Moozie.
My mom is one to exercise her creative exploits in the kitchen, on canvas and with sewing machine. (But not all at the same time. That’d be weird.) To this day she experiments with ideas like “What would happen if I put this ingredient in this recipe?” My comfort level in the kitchen and much of my fascination with food can be attributed to her allowing me to “help” in the kitchen. I’ll spare you the story of my making eggnog for a dinner party when I was fourteen.
Ice cream! (I’m now imagining Eddie Murphy’s routine. I digress.)
On a normal client shoot I’d have one of my food stylists bear the responsibility of preparing and styling the ice cream, but because I enjoy this kind of stuff I wanted to have some play time of my own. Besides, it gives me a better appreciation and understanding for what is involved in creating this freak of nature food look alike.
Gone are the days when instant mashed potatoes and Crisco were the preferred ingredients for fake ice cream for photography … at least for me. This new (to me) concoction is simply ready made store bought frosting and an inordinate amount of powdered sugar. Oh, and don’t forget the Cuisinart food processor … or two … the slight burning smell might be an indication that I was pushing the limits. I did three different batches and experimented with the different blade sets. The dough blade (plastic vs. the metal chopping blade) seems to put less strain on the motor … judging by the absence of the burning electric smell when using them.
The result is a pliable doughish mass that balls up in the food processor. From there I transfer it to a ZipLock bag and can scoop it out like ice cream. It’s amazing the consistency and how it fooled even my biggest ice cream critics — my 5, 6 and 8 year old boys. Aside from making scoops, I also made some soft serve ice cream. That required making more of a sticky, less solid mixture that I piped out from a pastry bag with an extra large tip. I discovered that having Popeye arms would be beneficial for this task.
I let one of the scoops sit out for a full week to see what it would look like. It held up amazingly well. In fact, the chocolate fudge drizzle on top held as well … straight from the bottle without doctoring. See what I mean? These were just left to sit out on the counter.
Here are the results from the studio setup. Anyone hungry for some nice cold fake ice cream?
There you have it. While fake, these are still edible, but who’d want to? My boys.
- Kyle
Share.
13 Responses to Fake Ice Cream
Leave a Reply
Follow KYLE
Behind The Scenes Video
Featured Posts
Portfolio
Instagramming
I am on my way to a shoot & I will be making fake ice cream so decided to see if there was any current info. I use the old recipe of crisco, 10x & karo but I’ve never really loved it. I liked your photos so think I’ll try the frosting today …how did you get the drips/melting. Tks for the tips
Ah the drips … basically diluted the mixture with water. I think diluting with Karo would be a good play as well but haven’t tried that. My food stylist is like you and uses the tried and true Crisco/Karo recipe but we used the new recipe last week on a shoot and I may have converted her. :)
How did you actually make this? Need to know for my graphics!
Basically you take store bought frosting and add powdered sugar and blend in a food processor. Work with the ratio until you get what looks almost like a dough ball—you can handle it like Play-Dough. Then use an ice cream scoop to make your heros.
Gorgeous Ice cream! I’m not from US so I have problems understanding what exactly is frosting. In what recipe is frosting used?
Thanks for sharing your experience!
Thank you. “Frosting” is powdered sugar with butter and milk spread on cake. Frosting with Crisco makes great ice cream.
I am a middle school Exploring Careers teacher. I would like to do a food stylist / photographer lab. Can you tell me more about the recipe? My kids would love this.
Thanks!
Basically it’s just a can of store-bought frosting and about 2/3 of a bag of powdered sugar. For best results blend it in a Cuisinart food processor with the dough blades. Be careful not to overheat your food processor. It makes a nice Play-Dough like ball. Then use an ice cream scooper. It’s addictively fun. :)
Love your work, and appreciate the skill that goes into making food actually appetizing in photos, now that I’m being asked to do it.
I, too, used a powdered sugar, Crisco, & Karo recipe for hard ice cream, and client loved it. Now trying to do same thing for soft-serve yogurt, and even Popeye arms won’t get that mixture through a piping bag.
For your soft-serve recipe, do you use less of the powdered sugar, or do you go the Crisco route? Your 7/2/12 and 10/11/12 comments above seem to contradict. Thanks in advance.
Patrick, Popeye arms indeed! We’ve moved to using pre-made frosting with powdered sugar. For soft-serve we simply use less powdered sugar. That’s what we used here: http://www.dreier.com/blog/i-scream-for-soft-serve/
Good luck! – Kyle
Hi
Have been on shoot all week involving fake ice cream…. All Flavours came out great and realistic except for chocolate. Tried multiple combinations… 1) Betty Crocker etc pre made frostin with powder super, 2) with corn syrup and crisco. The ridge on scoop were larger, fake chocolate ice cream was moist but thru lense looked dry.
Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.
…shooting the chocolate shots next week.
Best
Camille
Hi Camille,
I assume you started with chocolate flavored frostings. There are obviously different types…milk chocolate, dark chocolate, etc.
For “moisture” we always add drips/drops of watered down icing with a pipette as shown here: http://dreier.com/archive/image.php?img_id=169
Something else we’ll do sparingly is use a small atomizer and spritz the entire ice cream with water as shown here: http://dreier.com/archive/image.php?img_id=288
I hope that helps. Good luck!
-Kyle
Hi Kyle
I worked with fake frosting all Flavours .. Used powder sugar and about 1/8-1/4 cup of cocoa per batch. The ridges on the chocolate were larger not as refined as with other flavors. I also played with adding a little crisco and corn syrup.
For the melts look I took some of chocolate frosting made with elmers glue.. Client- photographer wanted a little melty look but no drips.
Thank you for your advice.. Will work on various combinations of chocolate frosting before the shoot.
Best
Camille