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CAKES & PATISSERIE RECIPE & PREPARED STOCK FOOD PHOTOS, STOCK FOOD PICTURES & FOOD PHOTO ART PRINTS

Stock photos & stock pictures gallery of cakes & Patisserie.

Cakes

Cake is a form of food, typically a sweet, baked dessert. Cakes normally contain a combination of flour, sugar, eggs, and butter or oil, with some varieties also requiring liquid (typically milk or water) and leavening agents (such as yeast or baking powder). Flavorful ingredients like fruit purées, nuts or extracts are often added, and numerous substitutions for the primary ingredients are possible. Cakes are often filled with fruit preserves or dessert sauces (like pastry cream), iced with buttercream or other icings, and decorated with marzipan, piped borders or candied fruit.
Cake is often the dessert of choice for meals at ceremonial occasions, particularly weddings, anniversaries, and birthdays. There are countless cake recipes; some are bread-like, some rich and elaborate and many are centuries old. Cake making is no longer a complicated procedure; while at one time considerable labor went into cake making (particularly the whisking of egg foams), baking equipment and directions have been simplified that even the most amateur cook may bake a cake.

TYPES OF CAKE

 

• CHEESECAKES, despite their name, aren’t really cakes at all. Cheesecakes are in fact custard pies, with a filling made mostly of some form of cheese (often cream cheese, mascarpone, ricotta or the like), and have very little to no flour added, although a flour-based crust may be used. Cheesecakes are also very old, with evidence of honey-sweetened cakes dating back to ancient Greece.

 

• SPONGE CAKES are thought to be the first of the non-yeast-based cakes and rely primarily on trapped air in a protein matrix (generally of beaten eggs) to provide leavening, sometimes with a bit of baking powder or other chemical leaven added as insurance. Such cakes include the Italian/Jewish pan di Spagna and the French Génoise. Highly decorated sponge cakes with lavish toppings are sometimes called gateau, after the French word for cake.

 

• BUTTER CAKES, including the pound cake and devil’s food cake, rely on the combination of butter, eggs, and sometimes baking powder to provide both lift and a moist texture.

 

Patisserie & Pastries

A pâtisserie is the type of French bakery that specializes in pastries and sweets. In France, it is a legally controlled title that may only be used by bakeries that employ a licensed maître pâtissier (master pastry chef).
In France, the pâtissier is a pastry chef who has completed a lengthy training process, typically an apprenticeship, and passed a written examination. Often found in partnership with a boulangerie, pâtisseries are a common sight in towns and villages in France.

A croissant is a buttery flaky bread or pastry named for its distinctive crescent shape. It is also sometimes called a crescent or crescent roll. Croissants are made of a leavened variant of puff pastry. The yeast dough is layered with butter, rolled and folded several times in succession, then rolled into a sheet, a technique called laminating. Crescent-shaped breads have been made since the Middle Ages, and crescent-shaped cakes (imitating the often-worshiped Moon) possibly since classical times. Croissants have long been a staple of French bakeries and patisseries.

The ingredients include flour, yeast, milk, eggs, and generous amounts of butter. A yeast dough is rolled out thinly, coated with butter, and then folded into numerous layers. If necessary, the dough is chilled to ease handling. The rolling, buttering, folding, and chilling is repeated several times to create a dough which is fluffy, buttery and flaky. However, not all danishes are made this way.

The Danish as consumed in Denmark can be topped with chocolate, sugar or icing, and may be stuffed with either jam, marzipan or custard. Shapes are numerous, including circles with filling in the middle (known as “Spandauer’s”), figure-eights, spirals (known as snails), and the pretzel-like kringles.

In the UK, various ingredients such as jam, custard, apricots, raisins, flaked almonds, pecans or caramelized toffee are placed on or within sections of divided dough, which is then baked. Cardamom is often added to increase the aromatic sense of sweetness.

In the US, Danish pastries are typically given a fruit or sweet bakers cheese topping prior to baking.[2] Danish pastries with nut fillings are also popular.

Danish pastry is a sweet pastry which has become a speciality of Denmark and the neighbouring Scandinavian countries and is popular throughout the industrialized world, although the form it takes can differ significantly from country to country. They are referred to as facturas in some Spanish speaking countries.
Buy all the stock photos in this gallery on line as Royalty Free or Rights managed stock photo. The stock pictures & stock images are all high resolution digital stock photos made award winning professional photographer Paul Williams.

Photo Art prints are also available to buy on line in large to small print formats for framing as art works for home, restaurant, pubs, office art or commercial art.

BUY FOOD STOCK PHOTOS & PRINTS OF THIS SERIES FROM OUR FOOD PHOTO LIBRARY:

• Stock Food Photography and Images of Burgers
• Stock Food Photos and Images of Meat
• Stock Food Photography of Indian Food
• Stock Food Photography of British Food
• Stock Food Photography of Italian Food
• Stock Food Photos and of Chinese Food
• Stock Food Photos and of Hungarian Food
• Stock Food Photos and of American Food
• Stock Food Photography and Images of Pizzas
• Stock Food Photography of Chocolate
• Stock Food Photography of Party Food
• Stock Food Photography of Christmas Food
• Stock Food Photography of Cakes