Warning:
this post may or may not make you hungry.
All the way
from Sydney, Australia, Ann Reardon runs the blog How to Cook That which
features creative desserts, cake, and chocolate. Alongside the blog, she also
has a YouTube channel where she posts recipe tutorials. (Are you hungry yet?)
She didn’t
start out as a blogger and YouTuber though! Ever since she was little, she
remembered that she loved to cook. She would write down recipes and adapt them
to her tastes. She finished school as a qualified food scientist and dietitian.
Her first jobs included being a consultant dietitian in the food industry and a
community and public health dietitian. After a few years, she resigned to take
on the role as a youth pastor. It was as a youth pastor that she hosted dinner
meetings at her house and people would ask her for her recipes. It was then
that the idea of creating a cooking blog formed. It was finally in March 2011
that she started her blog. She would type out those blog posts at night when
nursing her third son.
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| Ann Reardon's First Recipe Card |
What’s so
special about her sweets? A lot of them have a unique twist on them! Some sweets
are media inspired (Moana cake wreath, Chocolate Wonder Woman Pop Art) and
others are inspired by recent trends (Edible Fidget Spinner). Reardon would be
considered a pro-c creative. According to Kaufman & Beghetto’s four C Model, this means that her
creativity is advanced enough to be making a career out of it. Certainly, with
her countless subscribers, Reardon has made a fun career out of doing something
she loves.
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| https://www.instagram.com/p/BNBh5kvAo49/?taken-by=howtocookthat |
She has done
more than making sweets… She has been the very first to create an augmented
reality app for cakes based off of a gaming app. A bit confused? Okay. So you
bake a cake (which isn’t bad because she walks you through it!), print out a
template to put on top of the cake, and then load the app while following the
prompts. And then… Magic! You’ll see a unicorn, rainbow, dragon, or fireworks
bedazzling your cake! (which you can also take pictures of). While this
creative feat is very specific, perhaps it could be considered a big-c moment
for Reardon. After all, merging baking and augmented reality seems relatively
new.
Just because,
here’s another food picture!
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| https://www.instagram.com/p/8DVSa0tqJ_/?taken-by=howtocookthat |
Sources:
Smith,
Steven M., and Thomas B. Ward. “Cognition and the Creation of Ideas.” 21 Mar.
2012, pp. 546-574.
https://www.howtocookthat.net/public_html/
https://www.youtube.com/user/howtocookthat/featured
I love watching cake decorating videos! I could (and have) spent hours watching them. It's really interesting to see what influences one of those creators, and how they ended up where they are. I'm also incredibly intrigued by the augmented reality app -- I've never seen anything like it. Thank you for sharing this!
ReplyDeleteI have heard of this YouTube channel before, but I had no idea this was how it was started. I definitely see how Ann Reardon would be considered a pro-c creative because she was able to make a career out of cake decorating. The pictures you included really help to explain how Reardon is doing something fantastic with desserts. Thanks for writing this post!
ReplyDeleteI think this is really interesting. I totally agree with you that Ann Reardon is pro-C creative. She was able to connect cooking and modern technology so that there is more thing you can do with a normal cake. I think it is also important to consider that her creativity is also influenced by her passion for what she does. Being able to incorporate her passion into her career, Ann Reardon gained the best result from her creativity. On a side note, I think it is really fascinating that she can apply augmented reality into her daily work.
ReplyDeleteNow I have to go tell my 10 year old sister about this. she is obsessed with cooking videos and would love to but the augmented reality on her creations. That drive for making something new is something I see in her when she tries to take recipes and give them a twist. It so interesting to see some one that she may look up to and how there life is influenced by others imagination. Overall i really enjoyed your view on how this person is a creative and I also want a cake now.
ReplyDeleteWow, who would have thought baking cakes and an augmented reality app would go together? I loved your choice of subject for this blog post; not only is Reardon creative in the types of cakes she makes, she is innovative in the world of technology as well! I have never seen something like that app before, and the video does a great job of showing how it works. I would agree that she is a pro-c in the sense that she can make a living based on her creativity, but in a sense this app could be a big-c moment for her specifically, as you mentioned. It would be interesting to know whether she simply had the idea for the augmented reality app or if she took part in its development as well.
ReplyDeleteWhat a cool take on a old idea. I have always loved cake decorating and am obsessed with watching videos of them (as I'm sure most of us have spent hours doing). I'd never heard of this channel, but am definitely interested in her new spin on this concept!
ReplyDeleteI was so impressed by her idea for the augmented reality app! Maybe this accomplishment is at the pro-C level, but it definitely shows divergent thinking and the ability to store away and borrow knowledge from other fields. If she continues on the path of combining food with augmented reality technology, she could well be on the forefront of creating a new trend in food culture that might ultimately be considered big-C depending on how prominent it becomes in the future.
ReplyDelete