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!

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. 

Not just a Pumpkin Bread

I did not bake just any pumpkin bread this week. I baked pumpkin bread with chocolate chips! Recipe taken from My Baking Addiction. 

The module for my photography course this week not only covers information and tips on starting a career in the varying areas of professional photography such as travel, photojournalism, food etc, but it also discusses finding your own 'style' in your chosen field. The assignment involves taking a favourite photographer's piece of work and imitating it completely. This will be a challenge but definitely good practise. I will post my results on my next blog entry.


But for now...mmmm cake...

Sweet Valentine

It was our first Valentines in North America yesterday. The vibe of Valentines Day is a lot stronger over on this side of the world, not surprisingly. Valentines themed hand-made chocolates, desserts, Valentines themed kitchen decor and bakeware all over home-ware stores, and strangers yelling "Happy Valentines Day!" across the street at each other.

We seldom join in on the hype of Valentines Day. This year was no different, apart from my decision to bake Valentines cookies! Its not Valentines Day without heart-shaped cookies!

Sweet and light

Over the weekend we hired a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM Lens. We currently only own two lenses. A Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM, and a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 prime lens. I had been wanting a telephoto lens for quite some time, especially to allow me to obtain those tighter shots in my food photography.

So this week has been my opportunity to experiment with the 70-200mm. So what do I think? To be honest, I don't really know. Apart from the considerable increase in weight this lens has compared to the 17-55mm, obviously having to stand at a much further distance from my subjects. I am still yet to learn what advantages a telephoto lens can bring to my photos. I suppose due to the longer lens and with aperture f/2.8, it allows my backgrounds to 'drop off' more and allows the subjects in my photo to appear more 'stacked'. I think i'd much rather buy an extension tube instead of investing in a telephoto lens for food photography at this point. After all, Its not like i work in a big studio kitchen - just our little 8x5m apartment kitchen :) I will be conducting some research this week on why a telephoto in regards to the output quality of food photos.

I wanted to bake something with chocolate this week because it had been a while since I had a nice chocolate flavoured cake. But I didn't want anything too sweet and rich either, so I decided to bake a basic vanilla and chocolate marble cake with a hint of lemon. 

Now time to experiment with the 'new' lens. These photos were taken in very low light, with the lens mounted on a tripod of course. I struggled a little with setting up my composition from time to time because of the weight of the lens (i'm a somewhat small person so hand holding this lens can be a bit of a struggle!) and having to always step further and further back.

This week I am also trying to experiment with different Photoshop Actions and Filters. I really adore Aran Goyoaga and Beatrice Peltre's work. I love the colours and textures they use in their food styling. Textures, creative props and colours really make a difference in excellent food styling, so I did a bit of shopping this week to add to my prop collection! I noticed that they also play on Photoshop Actions to  bring out these colours and textures in various different ways. 

Food photography is all about making the food look the way consumers see it in their mind's eye. Its not as simple as taking a beautiful dish you cooked for dinner, throwing it down and taking a photo. Alot of the work goes into the styling itself.

The recipe I used for this cake is very easy. I took a basic recipe and adapted it a little, just by throwing in some lemon zest and lemon extract to give the cake a little bit of a lemon flavour. I also substituted milk for buttermilk in this recipe. 

Lemon and Chocolate Marble Cake

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 cup white sugar
• ½ cup butter, softened
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 2 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
• zest of 1 lemon
• 2 Tbsp lemon extract

Lemon Glaze

• ¾ cup confectioners sugar
• 2 Tbsp lemon extract

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 F (175 C). Grease and flour a 9 inch round cake pan.
2. Place flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla extract and buttermilk into a mixing bowl. Beat slowly to moisten, then beat with an electric mixer at medium speed for about 2mins until smooth.
3. Beat in lemon zest and lemon extract. Reserve half the batter. Pour the remainder into the pan.
4. Stir cocoa into the reserved batter. Drop by spoonfuls over the top of the white batter. Using a knife, swirl the cocoa batter into the white batter to incorporate it in a marble effect.
5. Bake in preheated oven for 30-35mins, until an inserted wooden pick comes out clean.
6. Remove cake from oven and let it cool completely. Meanwhile, for the sugar glaze, pour confectioners sugar in a bowl and hand-mix in lemon extract until desired consistency. Use a piping bag or spoon to drizzle glaze over cake.