This was my third year making holiday-time chocolates for friends, family, and co-workers. This year Mom helped me hit a record of 1080 individual pieces of chocolate. Every year I learn a lot about the process and I'm convinced I'll remember it all the following year. And every year I start the process with the same set of questions and frustrations. So this year I'm writing down everything I learned over the process for notes to next year.... go on »

The third week of photography lighting class, we worked on beauty lighting. We set up two stations with a tripod and a strobe light. We later added umbrellas to the mix to see how that affected things.... go on »

I'm always looking for an excuse to make donuts. I love donuts and I think they're highly underrated. I want to really experiment with donuts and make some fun ones.

So I'm planning a donut tasting party. I want to come up with several different recipes to try out on people. So here's what I'm thinking of:... go on »

For some reason, I decided that I wanted to make chocolates this year to give out to friends and co-workers. I've done some small experiments over the past couple of years with molded chocolates. They turned out reasonably well. But what I really wanted to do was to use chocolate transfer sheets to create designs on the tops of the chocolates. Transfer sheets are essentially colored chocolate printed onto acetate in a particular design. When you put melted chocolate on the transfer sheet, it transfers from the sheet to the chocolate.... go on »