Hi Bold Bakers
Recently, I posted my very first vlog of me organizing my pantry,
and it was a huge hit with you guys.
It was totally messy.
There was some stuff that definitely should have been thrown out
and some weird things that I tasted that I'm still not sure what they were.
Anyway, I thought you might like
another behind the scenes look at my food styling props,
all my vintage pieces on my old bakeware sets
and everything that we use to create our food photography and our styling.
Here at Baker Bolger Baking,
I have a whole room out in the garden that I dedicate to my props.
It's a little bit crazy back there. I know it is messy.
I'm just going to warn you, but let's go check it out.
So this is my garden.
Here is my garage.
But the back of the garage, we actually have a separate area,
which for us was just absolutely amazing.
It is a bonus kitchen.
So check this out.
This is where I keep my food styling props.
So this is my area is where I keep all my props.
There is there is something in every single cupboards.
I want us to just just like go through them.
There are a lot of these things mean a lot to me.
I have carried them on carry on luggage.
I have bought them from all over the world and I take really good care of them.
So I want to just show you a little bit of what I have.
So I always have my eyes open for beautiful things that I will use for
food photography, always, no matter where I am going,
even if it's just off the streets to get some groceries.
This is a cake stand that I got in TJ Max in Ireland, a.k.a TK Max or in Europe.
This oh, look, it's even got a sticker on it.
This was $13.
Everybody always asks me where I got this cake stand
Everybody I would fail in my book.
We put fairy cakes on this and we put little flowers around and everything.
It was just absolutely gorgeous.
I love this.
And more cake stands in here.
There's a wooden one also from TJ Max. This.
I definitely got a thrift store and it's one of those things
where I've had very little use for it, but when I did need it,
it came in really handy and it looks great.
You never know what is going to look great
at the time when you're pulling together a recipe.
So some props I don't use all the time, but when you have that certain recipe
that needs that little bit of something like
this is when you pull out these and it just works perfectly.
Oh, look at this. I love this.
I know this is just a glass bowl, but this reminded me
very much of the old cookbooks my mom used to have and like that, or from
the seventies that had like a big fruit salad and old school fruit salads.
But I just thought this was like a real blast from the past.
I got this and a thrift store for only a few dollars.
I absolutely love it.
Here is my collection of saucers, bowls, serving platters.
All of these things were picked off in thrift stores.
I can tell you where I got this.
Where did I get this?
I got this in America somewhere, says Chelsea on the back.
Really pretty.
The thing about these is that you only get one of each ever.
You're really lucky if you get a set.
So I have so many of these small little place
that you only have
one of each.
I'll tell you where this came from.
My mom gave me this.
It says Crown Staffordshire made in England.
A lot of the stuff is made in England's gorgeous little place.
I've actually never used it for food photography because it's so busy,
but I think what I'm going to do is actually like piling it on the wall
or something like that. So beautiful.
So when you go into thrift stores or to charity shops or to
consignment stores, places like that, you'll find a lot of saucers
and one offs because they just kind of seem to gather off.
So it is harder to guess side plates,
serving plates, something that's a little bit bigger
because if you put something on something that's too small, it doesn't look right.
I love this plate.
I used this place.
I think we did a a Spanish
bread on the websites and we used this place.
I think I got it in Northern California, up in wine country.
I absolutely love it. I love the color of it.
I love that there's no gold or silver around the rim.
There's something like so bright about this, oh, look at this.
So I don't
have a huge amount of Royal Alberta Bone China.
You guys probably recognize this design.
Kevin got me this in Wexford, Ireland, where I'm from.
Add a little kind of a flea market and it was a little bit pricey.
It wasn't pricey, it was like it was more than I normally spend on a plate.
It was €30 and normally I get my plates for like €3 or something like that.
But it's a really nice piece and I think we put a lemon cake on it before
and it just really pops and the simplicity of the gold
and it makes it kind of like elegant looking.
I really love this.
If you see something of this pattern, I'd say definitely nab it
because they are quite valuable.
Let me show you these lovely bowls.
I got these in a place in Wexford Town where I'm from.
It's actually outside of Wexford
called the Treasure Trove Antiques in Castle Bridge County, Wexford
use of all kind of gold guilders plates made in France, really beautiful.
I have a few of them.
Little bowls for ice cream for we've done semifreddo in them before.
My recommendation is when you see something like this and you like it,
grab it because you don't know how long it's going to be there for.
So those are my plates.
No. Two are the same. Everything is unique.
Everything has a story which I absolutely love.
And I started out with literally one.
Please I can even show you.
Years ago, eight years ago, when we started bigger, bolder baking,
I saw this place and of goodwill in Santa monica.
I think I fell in love with that.
I thought I was absolutely gorgeous.
So if you look back at my very old food photography, my stuff was on this
and I think this was the place that sparked my love for like,
just beautiful, unique,
like, previously loved dishes.
And I just. I absolutely love us. Why do I love.
I know it's colorful, there's gold trim, everything
I have everything kind of broken up into sections of things that I need.
So I think I have bowls in here.
Yeah, like little dishes, souffle dishes, creme brulee dishes.
I love these.
I got these in a thrift store for a few dollars.
I broke one of them, and fortunately, I absolutely adore them.
Then you have to have standard dishes, you know, hopefully dishes.
Ramekins, too. No, because it's baking.
We do a lot of like afternoon tea, which are a lot of like bond cakes,
love cakes, things like that.
So we try and set up the scene for like coffee time, breakfast time,
like I said, afternoon tea, things like that.
So I have a ton of teacups, saucers, coffee mugs,
anything you would need for a tea situation.
I've got this.
This was a charity shop, and that was in Santa
Barbara on the main street, also called Street.
What's a country called Main Street?
State Street. I found these two mugs.
Like who on earth? Would need.
It says on the bottom, roller disco.
Roller disco. Who would need roller disco mugs?
Like, in all fairness? So I've used those very rarely.
But you have to have some roller disco mugs in your collection.
So as you can see, I have a lot of props.
So not everything has a home in a cupboard.
So some stuff.
Much to Kevin's chagrin, has to live on the countertop
is why he doesn't come back here very often.
But I have a lot of like look at my teapots here.
I have some tea pots and jugs.
I absolutely adore this.
Let me see what you have here with these little bowls.
I use these bowls a lot. I use them
in my cookbook.
I use them. I have saucers for them. Really beautiful.
Like what you call that royal blue or something?
Absolutely gorgeous.
I love those.
Great for food photography.
Would use them in everyday life. No, probably not.
Should you?
Yeah, you probably should because they're so pretty.
And who would not like to eat out of those bowls?
So this is something that I got recently in Wexford.
I put this on my carry on and almost like I had the winning
lotto take because I carried it all the way very closely
from Ireland to Los Angeles because I didn't want it to break.
It's is the coffee here?
I don't really know what it is. It's it was a coffee pot.
I absolutely fell in love with it.
And we used this recently also in the same session that we did for the wheel.
We did the coffee scene I used to do.
I filled it full of coffee.
These are the kind of things that make me very happy that everything is old.
This, however, is cause I have quite a strong connection to this.
I use this in my first cookbook, my mom.
We were a family of seven, my mom and five kids, my mom and my dad.
So it's eight inches. It's a little bit small.
My mom used to do crumbles and Eve's
putting everything in this little dish and it's something
I have sort of fond memories of growing up .
So when I did my first cookbook, I said to her, mom,
can I take that and put that in my first cookbook?
And she says, Yeah, no problem.
I just has so, so much nostalgia attached and like lovely food
memories attached to this. I absolutely love us over here.
Oh, look at this.
I love this.
How cool is this?
Like, in all fairness, a green measuring jug.
Absolutely love it. I also got this in Wexford.
I definitely a came from England or somewhere like that.
So it's funny that it has cups on edge because we don't use cups.
We went on our honeymoon to Mexico
and I saw this in a gift store at the hotel and it's a soap dish,
so it's not a butter dish, even though it looks like it.
It's a soap dish, but it works really well as a butter dish.
And we've shot that in a lot of photography and it looks really good.
You never know what you're going to find on your travels.
What's up here?
Oh, yeah. This is all my glass.
I have a lot of glass bowls, dishes, jugs.
Look at this. I saw this.
I think I got this as the flea market in L.A., the Rose Bowl.
I'm pretty sure it is.
It is a maple syrup jug, like really retro old school.
I absolutely adore it.
Like, how gorgeous is that? All my glass stuff.
I like to keep everything separated.
You know, there is a certain amount of order to the disorder.
What else do we have? What's in here?
Nothing's in there.
I do have to say, I find these on Etsy
and places like that because it is harder to find vintage tins.
So I got these on Etsy and this was given to me by Kate Martindale,
who was a stylist for my first for my book, and she's amazing.
She gave me this lovely angel food cake.
Pam This was made by, you know, in America there's a cake
flower called Swan and this is one of their tins.
I got this on Etsy.
Also these pieces, I do pay a little bit more for a buy a little bit more.
I mean, $12, something like that.
But I have to kind of seek these out.
It's much harder to find these in consignment stores and in charity shops.
If you do, you're very lucky.
This is an old this is a fondue.
It was it would have been a sash originally.
It was a fondue pass.
I got this in a charity shop also.
It's very seventies, as is fondue.
Beautiful to photograph.
We used this in our caramel apples, I think two years ago
for Christmas or for for Halloween.
And we used that pass.
Oh, let's cool over here to my linens because I want to show you
these are like, you know, part of the props
and the styling is also linens, so it can be hard to find linens.
I'll tell you why.
If you go to a prop house, which they have in L.A.
to rent props, you're paying like $20 for these.
But if you're smart, you keep always an eye out.
And I picked off a lot in in Wexford
again, a lot of people don't use these on a daily basis.
You don't need nobody uses tablecloths anymore, nobody
has these doilies and fancy napkins, but they look so amazing.
Look at this that these are tablecloths.
These are full tablecloths, really old.
And I'll tell you, I'll show you. Look at this.
There's hole to see that there's holes in these.
But you know what?
And they're so pretty and they're so unique
and they're like previously lost that we shoot around that.
So you don't even see that.
But they've oftentimes there's stains on these that you can't get off.
There are holes.
And through the magic of my photographer, we shoot around them like, look at this.
Who needs a tablecloth that looks like this?
The answer is me.
I need this tablecloth.
We did it recently for the academy.
We shot something on us.
And I love us and love it.
I love how it's not really in style anymore.
Those are tablecloths.
I also have my napkins.
These are also like napkins and things like that.
Little, little accents.
Look at this.
How beautiful is that little accent
that we put in the corners of photos?
We place the desserts on bar,
crazy on embroiderers and little like, I don't know.
Let me see. I'll show you. Like, look at this.
Look at this. How gorgeous is that?
These all end up in second hand shops because nobody uses them anymore.
You know, that's that's where I come in and I supermodel, I love them.
So these all have to be steamed and ironed
before we use them so they look good for camera.
Oh, I want to show you this. Look, this.
Here I have
my collection of knives and forks.
I pick these up everywhere I go.
I do not spend a lot of money on knives and forks.
There's absolutely no need to.
If you see them for a lot of money, I'd say keep on looking.
Look at this.
I did get this in Ireland.
I'm trying to get this mark off.
I absolutely adore the spoon for serving.
I just I love to have like a variety of serving spoons, cake,
cake slices, things like that.
They're super important. So those are my knives and forks.
I've got tons of those.
Oh, I want to get these.
So these are my other utensils,
but stuff that are there are not knives and forks.
They are like vintage old school palette knives, carving knives.
Okay, so look at this.
There was an estate sale in my neighborhood in Santa monica,
and you never know what you'll find.
I found this gorgeous old school safe that nobody else wanted except for me.
And I think it was like $2.
It's battered. It's bruised, it's all walls.
And it's and it has this, I guess, that's so old fashioned.
And then we have things like this.
An old palette knife. Look at us.
Beautiful for food photography.
So there you go. Those are all my props.
Now, when you see our recipes out there, our food photography, our website,
you'll know how much care and attention went in to bringing those photos together.
And so much love is behind those dishes that the recipes lay on.
Let me know in the comments below what other vlogs you would like to see.
I am happy to show you guys around more.
I'm going to head off now
and you guys don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.