Fake Ice Cream for Food Photography

You may be aware that I teach at a private IEK college, IEK Praxis, where I hold seminars on food styling and food photography.

One of the things that the students asked me to show them how to do was to prepare fake ice cream for food photography….

If you think that the ice cream you see in the advertisements and magazines, on TV and online is real, don’t believe it anymore.

Most of what you see is fake and frankly it’s obvious because real ice cream would be unable to withstand the heat and time out of the freezer required for a long photographic session or a video set.

Photographic lights are very hot even though many LED are now used and photographic studios are warm places and not conducive to frozen products. So mostly when we want to photograph an apple pie and ice cream, the ice cream is usually fake.

In the case of shooting an ice cream on its own in an advertisement we can use real ice cream, but it requires the photographer to work extremely quickly(especially if it is in a studio) as only a few minutes out of the freezer could change the consistency of the ice cream’s texture and ruin the shoot as the ice cream starts to melt and is no longer frosty and smooth.

There are many recipes for fake ice cream around usually using a powder made into a puree… The only problem is that with puree the ice cream immediately appears fake. ..

There are two aspects to ice cream that you need to make it appear real. The “foot” or the base of the ball of ice cream needs to be constructed. If this is done successfully then we will have a good fake ice cream.

If there are ripples or ridges in the ice cream it will also appear more real. With these two things we move away from the typical puree used for fake ice cream.

I will give you a recipe for fake ice cream which looks quite real. And not just that because you can actually eat this fake ice cream and not only that it has quite a nice taste- so if you want to use it for an advert or video go ahead…

I gave the students a recipe that didn’t require a mixer but I haven’t used that here :-) Come to the lesson and learn for yourself :)

Diffuculty: 1 of 3

Duration:15 minutes

Serves:6-8 scoops

Ingredients

200g margarine (white)

150g glucose syrup

900g caster sugar

Method

We need white coloured margarine…There is one brand in Greece.. Super Fresco..

All the other margarines are coloured yellow to look like butter so be careful which margarine you use!

Keep the margarine at room temperature and put in a mixer and place the glucose syrup in. Beat it until it becomes a fluffy mixture.

Put in the caster sugar and mix it up VERY SLOWLY!!

Keep mixing until it is all blended together.

Be careful. When you mix the mixture it increases the temperature which can cause the texture to alter and become more compacted. If this happens put it in the fridge for a while and carry on after.

Try scooping the mixture to see how it looks using an ice cream scoop..

If you want to make fake chocolate ice cream add some cocoa to the mixture to colour it..start with two teaspoons and add more if needed.

If you want strawberry ice cream add some strawberry jam slowly instead of the glucose syrup. Maybe add 1-2 drops of red food colour too..

If you want the ice cream to have chocolate chips or nuts in it put them through a sieve first to get rid of the small bits and then mix the larger pieces into the fake ice cream.

Generally there is a plethora of tricks to try.

With so much sugar in the mixture, keep the mix in the fridge until you wish to use it…