Jennie's Best Chocolate Chip Cookies!

There's nothing better than the good old chocolate chip cookie. I found this recipe from In Jennie's Kitchen - her best chocolate chip cookie recipe. Deliciously warm, chunky, soft, slightly chewy and the best part - full of chocolate!

Be warned - these cookies are pretty big! And the recipe makes approximately 35 of them!

The recipe calls for chocolate discs, but I used chocolate chips. Enjoy!

"Lest we forget"

Today is the 25th of April and although we are not home in New Zealand this year, it does not mean we have forgotten about ANZAC Day.


Of course, I decided to bake ANZAC biscuits - popular in New Zealand and Australia, this sweet biscuit is made of rolled oats, desiccated coconut, golden syrup, sugar, and butter. 


I admit that sometimes I get carried away and bake a little too much in one go. This time was no different. In fact, this time was worse. Not only did I bake ANZAC biscuits last Thursday, but I also baked Chocolate Chip Cookies. We had planned a long weekend to Niagara for the Easter holidays, and I thought it was a good idea to bake some cookies for our road trip. Again, I underestimated the portion of ingredients, and we still have over half the batch left. I also went cookie crazy last week so that I could get in some practise shots for a potential client cookie photo shoot coming up. 

Here is a simple ANZAC Biscuit recipe.

Stand by for my next blog post- Chocolate Chip cookies!

Happy Easter!

Hi guys. Im back!
Its been about a month since my last blog post and I do apologize. Life has been throwing me a few awesome opportunities these past few weeks. You may recall that I was preparing to partake in my first client photo shoot. My part in that project is now complete and what a great experience!


These last few weeks I have been busy trying to get my website going, figuring out and getting things done for my freelance business and discussing new opportunities with different contacts.


During the client photo shoot, I had the opportunity to work side by side with a creative director for a marketing/design agency and for the first time, I also got to play around with some professional lighting equipment such as a Lowel DP Light and Lowel Reflective Umbrella. It was my chance to put what I have learnt over the last few months into practise. I must say that working with umbrellas in food photography is definitely not as forgiving as it would have been working with softboxes. This was one of the first things I learnt about in regards to lighting with food photography, and at least I got to experience and learn first-hand that this is in fact true. But nonetheless, the photo shoot was a success and one can only really learn to improve by experiencing. I have a couple more potential opportunities for other projects - watch this space! :)


Anyway, as Easter is upon us, I wanted to try out this chocolate recipe I stumbled across a few weeks ago in a food magazine - homemade Chocolate Covered Cream Easter eggs!

Chocolate Covered Cream Eggs

recipe adapted from Experience Magazine

(makes approx 16 eggs)

• ¾ cups (175ml) unsalted butter, softened
• ½ cup (125ml) sweetened condensed milk
• 2 tsp (10ml) vanilla extract
• pinch of salt
• 5 cups (1.25L) icing sugar
• yellow and red food colouring

Coating

• 10oz (300g) milk chocolate
• 1 Tbsp vegetable shortening

DIRECTIONS

1. In a large bowl, beat together butter, condensed milk, vanilla and salt.
2. Using low speed of an electric mixer, beat in 4 cups of the icing sugar. Add the remaining icing sugar and, using hands, knead into dough until smooth.
3. Place a third of the dough in a bowl and tint orange using the yellow and red food colouring. Make 16 small balls with the orange dough.
4. Divide the white dough into 16 pieces and flatten each piece. Then place each orange ball in the centre of each white piece.
5. Shape the white dough around the orange ball to form the shape of an egg. Place on a parchment paper lined baking sheet and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or until very firm. 

Coating

1. In a bowl set over hot (not boiling) water, melt chocolate with vegetable shortening.
2. Using two forks, stab each egg carefully and dip into the chocolate. Let the excess drip off. Place on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Drizzle some of the remaining chocolate over the top if desired and refrigerate for about 1 hour or until set.

[Custom Lettering : Melt some white chocolate and place in a piping bag or small resealable bag with trip cut off and pipe initials, letters, patterns onto each egg.]

16 eggs would have been too many for two, so divided all the ingredients by half in order to make 8 eggs. Be warned- these eggs are pretty sweet. 'F' for Federico who complained they were way too sweet.