Whenever I tell people I’m a food stylist, invariably the first thing people assume is that I stick everything together with hairspray and lipstick, switch pancake syrup for motor oil and milk for PVA glue. The truth, thankfully is that most food styling these days is simply presenting (usually) edible food in front of a camera, yes there may be tweezers and cocktail sticks involved (to put and hold things in place), but quality ingredients and cooking are the priority for most successful shoots.
There is one nifty trick I like though, for a problem there is no getting around- Ice cream does not like to hang around in front of camera. Sometimes you need it to hang around in front of camera, for example for some characters I was commissioned to make for an ice cream wafer brand. The solution is fake ice cream. different stylists have their own recipes, but here is mine!
450 Icing Sugar
160g High Fructose Corn Syrup
125g Vegetable Suet
Simply beat or blend the syrup and suet until smooth and beat in the icing sugar to the desired mouldable consistency, you can scoop with ice cream scoops or mould carefully with your hands, I kind of fold a ball inside out to create a rough edge, any finger marks (which revert instantly to play dough form) you can tweak by scraping with a sharp turning knife.
You can reduce the corn syrup content to get a more brittle dough with more definition (someone came up with the word ‘barking’ for this)
You can replace some of the icing sugar for cocoa powder to make chocolate ice cream (this will create a more brittle dough so add a little more corn syrup if you want it to be smooth) and of course you can add any food colouring you want to create ‘flavours’
This stuff keeps like play dough, so you can wrap in clingfilm and keep for a couple of weeks if you need.
If you need some ‘melt’ showing then you can always use custard, yoghurt or actual softened ice cream when the rest of the shot is ready to shoot.