Donut Daddy: Sugar and Seduction — Cookbook Photography
Title: Donut Daddy: Sugar and Seduction
Author: Anthony Randello-Jahn
Publisher: Ten Speed Press / Penguin Random House
Published: 2026
Scope: Full cookbook photography commission
Anthony Randello-Jahn — The Donut Daddy — is a Melbourne pastry chef and bakery owner who built a following of two million on Instagram through a particular kind of sensual, unapologetic cooking content. His debut cookbook for Ten Speed Press brought that same energy to the page: sixty-nine dessert recipes with a distinct visual and tonal identity.
The photography on this book was a collaboration. Anthony shot much of the lifestyle imagery himself — which made sense given how central his persona is to the work — and I photographed the food. The brief for the food photography was clear in terms of mood: dark, considered, textured. Close attention to surface and light. The kind of images that give weight to the subject rather than prettify it.
A cookbook commission works differently to a campaign or brand shoot. Every image has to function on its own as a recipe reference while sitting coherently within the whole. Across this book that meant finding a visual language that could carry the drama of the subject — glazed surfaces, cross-sections, sugar work, dripped finishes — without tipping into excess.
Donuts, as it turns out, photograph very well in low light.
Styling Lee Blaylock
