Hey! Thanks for checking out my website. My name is Tom, and welcome to Claytons Cookbook!
As the name suggests, Claytons Cookbook is a recipe and baking blog which started in 2017. At this time, I was halfway through my university course in Reading studying food science. I wanted to create a database of my favourite recipes and thought I would share them with other people as well. This was where Claytons Cookbook was born with my love of cooking and food photography.
Claytons Cookbook now provides over 100 recipes which are predominantly vegan and vegetarian for home cooks and bakers to get their daily fix of delicious food. Whilst working in the food industry as part of my degree, I have experienced working as a junior culinary developer.
This has lead me to write a mixture of recipes for Claytons Cookbook for example classic recipes such as shakshuka, carrot cake and madeleine, more elevated recipes such as salted caramel brownies and Baileys crème Brûlée and finally some healthier recipes like smoothie bowls and beetroot brownies .
Early Years
Since a young age I have always loved my food, you could say when I was young I had a little bit of baby fat. As I got older I completed many course such as hospitality & catering, physical education and food technology while at school. This allowed me to learn more about diet and food.
I was always interested in photography, whether this was because both of my grandad’s did photography as a hobby or because my brother was completing his photography A-level while is was growing up. Either way this lead me to the decision to study photography when completing my A-levels.
What do I use to photograph?
I used to photograph everything on my site with a Sony A6000 and use a vintage Nikkor 135mm 1.8 or a Sony 50mm 1.8 lens until March 2020. From then everything is photographed with a Sony A7Rii with 90mm Macro lens. I either shoot in natural light or using flash if the lighting is inconsistent and I edit my photographs using Lightroom.