Food Styling Hacks – Faux Ice Cream

01/04/2021 In photography 101, Photography hacks By micheile henderson

Food Styling Hacks – Faux Ice Cream

If you heard about crazy things like ‘motor oil’ instead of syrup. I honestly think most of the things we hear or see on social media about these hacks aren’t things that are often used. That said, there are a lot of things that aren’t what they seem.

post has been updated with my results!

Take for example, Ice Cream. More often than not it’s fake and for good reason. It melts so quickly! It’s totally doable to shoot real Ice Cream if you’ve got things well organized and all set up, but if you don’t have airco and it’s hot, forget it. It’ll start melting before you turn your back.

One way of shooting Ice Cream is to make your own fake Ice Cream. YouTube is full of tutorials to show you how.

My results

Made using corn starch & hair conditioning. The recipe is from Lukeslife and can be found below along with an instructional video. I’ll be going away for a week so no time to write a big write up but I will because I found a few challenges with this for food photography. For one it is really crumbly if it dries out in the slightest. Would I use this recipe again? Yes! It was easy, and these are staple items you can easily find. I’d also like to share that I used food coloring gel and it required an entire tube. To get it to look more authentic I also added some real strawberry (really small piece!).

Stay tuned on a full write up including some video I shot!

Scroll below for more variations on fake ice cream!

This recipe is from YouTube user LukesLiife.

MATERIALS
+ 2 cups of corn flour
+ 3/4 cups of hair conditioner
+ food coloring (a little goes a long way)
Note: If your dough is too runny just add more corn flour.

This one is from YouTube user Nicole S. Young

Watch below how Nicole makes the faux Ice Cream. She’s got some great tips for shooting the photos too!

MATERIALS:
+ 16 oz can frosting (Nicole uses white, I guess you can use a color if it is the color of the Ice Cream you want to make.)
+ 16+ ounces powdered sugar (not an exact amount, you need to play with it. Just over a pound +/-)
+ Nicole recommends gel food coloring
+ a food processor

Mix it in the food processor, add the coloring after you’ve pulsed the frosting a few times until it’s nice and creamy. Tip: a little color goes a long way. Also you can add ingredients e.g. nuts.

I also came across this from Suzy Eaton Designs,

She’s got two recipes online, one is made with shortening!

You can find them on her website, using this link.

Have you tried this? I’m so curious! I’m still going to try this using not only food coloring, but also cocoa to the mix to make it more realistic? What do you think?

I’m glad I tried this! I love ice cream shots!

Thanks for stopping by,

xoxo,