Foto Friday – Cookies – In a Flash

(Jenn and I are posting some of the best content from Jenn’s Design Blog – scrapkittydesign.com. Here’s one requested by a reader – and a great one!)

My youngest, Becky, has been bugging me to bake these lemon cookies from a recipe we found in the newspaper last week, so this morning we got BUSY! (recipe below) But I ALSO had an AH-HA photo moment

I wanted to take a photo of Bec with her cookies, but it took a couple of tries:

first, I took the photo without a flash – kinda dark, I COULD lighten it in Photoshop, but let’s try with the flash…

WHOA! That blew her out completely – WAY too strong a flash!

Now what I would have LIKED to do is use a fill flash – where the flash goes off but not at full strength – but alas, this camera does not have a fill flash setting. Hmmmm – What if I put my finger over the flash to attenuate it…

OOH – that’s RED! Hmmm… what ELSE do I have that I could cover the flash with to make it not so bright – oh wait! There’s a stack of paper in the printer right here….

THERE WE GO! I just held a piece of paper from my printer up to the flash, and it diffused and deflected the flash! COOL!

So the lesson from this is, you don’t need to know all the fancy settings on your camera to get great results! There’s a great post on Photojojo about how to make a flash diffuser out of a film can – CLICK HERE to see it.

Now go make your OWN cookies – they are YUMMY!

Lemon Cooler Cookies

from USA Today Magazine, May 16, 2008

Ingredients:

1 cup bleached all purpose flour

¾ cups confectionary sugar, divided

1 tsp finely grated lemon zest

1 stick salted butter, softened

¼ tsp. vanilla extract

Directions:

Adjust oven rack to lowe-middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees F.

Mix flour, ¼ cup confectioners sugar, and lemon zest in a medium bowl. Add butter and vanilla; beat until ingredients form into a dough. Drop cookie dough by generous teaspoons onto a parchment or Silpat lined cookie sheet. Bake until cookie bottoms are golden brown, about 15 minutes. Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.

Place remaining ½ cup confectioner’s sugar in a quart sized zipper-lock bag. Working a dozen at a time, drop the cookies into the sugar and shake to coat.

Cookies can be stored in an airtight tin for up to 1 week.

MAKES ABOUT 2 dozen Per cookie: 67 calories, 1g protein, 8g carbohydrates, 4g fat (2g saturated), 10mg cholesterol, 0g fiber, 27 mg sodium. (WW points= 2 per cookie)

AND – don’t forget to scrap your baking session!

Happy Scrapping!