Today was a good day

Whilst I complete the final stages of my website I thought I might do a little post over here about my day today. It's nice to be able to reflect positively, can any of us say we do that enough of have I not shook the winter blues yet? 

Anywho today was my day off and I decided it was time to try my hand at baking some dishes I'd promised myself I would. Granola and focaccia. 

Hand making bread takes a long time, you'll need a couple of hours! Yet it is so rewarding when it's finally ready and the compliments start flowing. Being a fanatic of Italian food, I sought to make this olive oil and rosemary based flatbread and I'm very happy with the results. Perfect when served warm with olive oil and balsamic vinegar to dip in. 

In between waiting for my bread to prove and tidying up my dresser I made granola  (with so many nommy ingredients). It's so easy to whip up and add ingredients to your liking.

I am looking forward to sprinkling this on my porridge tomorrow morning before work. 

I got a few bits done and also was delighted to get a few out of the blue compliments on my modelling portfolio today. 

All in all a productive day off! 

Thanks for reading 

X 

Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe

Easter is up there with Valentines as one of the best times of year for the chocolate business and given both the season and the popularity of my cookies I thought I'd share my recipe for these sumptuous treats. This past year I've been well and truly channelling my inner domestic goddess, taking to the kitchen to whip up food from scratch and not only is it very rewarding but I've found the results to be a lot better that shop brought ready made alternatives. But on with the recipe (which I adapted from this one) and makes around 12-14 cookies you'll need:

Ingredients

• 125g of Softened Butter
• 125g Caster Sugar
• 50g Light Brown Soft Sugar
• 50g  Dark Muscavado Sugar
• 1 Egg lightly beaten
• 225g Self Raising Flour or 175g of Self Raising with 50g of Cocoa Powder for Chocolate Cookies
• 200g Chocolate Chips
• 1-2 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 1/2 of Salt
• 1/2 Tbsp Cinnamon

What you'll need

• Measuring Scales
• A Tablespoon
• A Teaspoon
• A Mixing Bowl
• A Regular Bowl 
• Oven Trays
• Greaseproof Paper
• Wire Cooling Rack(s)
• Sieve

1. First of all preheat your oven to 180 degrees or gas mark 4.
2. I like to make sure I'm prepared so grab your oven trays and cut your greaseproof paper to size so they're all ready to be adorned with your cookies.
3. Measure out all of your ingredients, I reccomend you do all of the dry ingredients first as it stops them sticking to measuring bowl later. Pop the self raising flour in a bowl for now. Measure out your sugars before putting them straight into the mixing bowl. Then you can measure out your butter.
4. Taking a spoon (I find a metal spoon a lot easier to use than a wooden one for this task) cream the sugars and the butter together.
5. Now add in your egg and vanilla extract (I'm quite liberal with the vanilla as I love its taste so I use two tsps but one is fine!)
6. Now using a sieve sift in your flour and/or cocoa powder, cinnamon and salt into the mixing bowl, give this a stir to combine the ingredients.
7. Add the chocolate chips to the mixture and continue stirring ensuring a thorough combination of all your ingredients. At this point I like to stick my hands in and combine the mixture into one big ball, but this is not essential to the next step, once combined you can leave it as it is if you like.
8. Roll bits of the mixture between the palms of your hands to create balls of your cookie mixture that can go straight onto your oven tray. Alternatively if you want more precisely shaped cookies roll the whole mixture in a log shape and cut it up. When placing on the trays be sure to leave ample space as the cookies will spread out in the oven. I can fit about 6 to a tray. 
9. Put your trays of cookies in the oven for 7-10 minutes depending on how soft you'd like them. 7 minutes will make them very soft, 10 will leave them golden brown around the edges but still soft and chewy. From experience I tend to go for 10 minutes. 
10. Once cooked, immediately place your oven trays on wire racks and cover with a tea towel. Then and I STRESS THIS leave them to cool for 15-30 minutes. The cookies need time to cool down and sort of 'set', if you try to take them off the tray too early theres a chance you'll waste half a cookie! So take a breather- watch tv, do 20 sit ups or whatever you need to do to fill that time. 
11. Carefully start to peel your cookies away from the greaseproof paper, they should come away whole. Tap the bottoms to make sure they're done cooling before transferring them to a destination of your choice; be it your mouth, plate or biscuit tin. 

Overall these cookies have gone down a massive treat in my house so I find myself making them quite regularly.The great thing about them is not only are they delicious but they don't take an awful long time to make and you can experiment with the skeleton recipe adding ingredients to your taste for instance you could add fruit, nuts, seeds, spices and even confectionary, its up to you! I myself, decided to use three sugars instead of the two in the skeleton recipe as dark muscavado further enhances the end result with dark sweet undertones.These cookies will keep for a few days but you probably won't even have to consider this as they turn out anything like mine they won't last a day or two (at the maximum!) And there you have it your very own homemade decadent treats, perfect with a cup of tea and much better than shop brought ones!

Do you make your own cookies? Will you try this recipe? Let me know your thoughts! And Happy Easter!

A Visual Catch Up

Hanging upside down on the stairs | Baking Cookies | Illustrating Practice  Of Devendra Banhart| Discarded Flowers| Lighting Practice| Brownie Baking

I wanted to check in with all of those that read my blog and let you know what I've been up to recently. Whilst I may not always be modelling I have been keeping myself busy with other activities!  
I've recently been getting stuck in with my video production course, experimenting with lighting setups and occupying myself with both the planning and pre production of a horror special effects project.  As part of the pre production process I've got to revisit some of my favourite horror productions like Dead Set and the spanish horror film Rec , studying sure comes a lot easier when you get to watch movies you love as 'research'! One of the tasks we were set was to select a shot from a film and emulate it, thats what I'm doing in the shot above for her a fellow film student- lying upside down on some stairs.

Elsewhere I've been baking ALOT, it started out about two weeks ago with ONE batch of cookies. They were so popular in our house that I've been chained to the stove and forced to cook more sweet treats. Slight exaggeration aside, I really do enjoy cooking from scratch, experimenting with different ingredients and giving all retailers of cookies and brownies a run for their money. Theres pasta in the pipeline, I also made my own pesto last week. Can we tick off Domestic Goddess yet?

I recently got round to listening to Devendra Banhart's new album 'Mala', another album of the dreamboat's folk flavouring. It was a delight with my favourite tracks being; 'Never Been Such Good Things', 'You're Fine Petting Duck' and 'Golden Girls'.  Listening to Banhart's soothing sounds and finely tuned instrumentation really should be done with a glass of vino in hand, whilst lounging in an hammock- that is the only thing missing! This inspired me to play around with a photograph of his, I was very keen to attempt a digital illustration but I couldn't bring myself to destroy him! Practice makes perfect though!

I've also been pitching lots of new reviews to publications, there are so many gigs I want to go to in the coming months, ones not to be missed and that will hopefully provide good reading. I'm soon to be blogging on the Huffington Post's new student blog section too! I'm so excited about writing this year and I'm snapping up any opportunities to do just that, so stay tuned!

I'm working flat out at the moment, aiming to be in a constant state of 'beta' creation and grab those opportunities with both hands! So I just want to say thank you to all those who take the time to read this and say that I look forward to sharing my journey with you.

Abitha xo

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