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food

in food, photography

Afternoon Tea and Scones

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March 11, 2016
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After living in London for six months, I finally appreciate scones. Not the dry crumbly triangles that americans pass for scones. But real scones. Which are actually more like biscuits. Not the english kind. The american kind. Let me start over.

The staple of a proper afternoon tea is a good scone with fresh clotted cream and jam. It’s always the simple things that get overlooked and underrated. But when I stumbled upon this recipe for homemade clotted cream, the craving came to me. And when I gave my Irish husband the pick of my next culinary experiment, he was instantly drawn to the scones. A match made in heaven.

All credit goes to the view from the great island and fifteen spatulas for the recipes but here are anecdotes from my experience.

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in food

Thousand Layer Chocolate Chip Cookies

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February 22, 2016
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Who doesn’t love a good chocolate chip cookie? The problem is there’s not just one kind of chocolate chip cookies. There aren’t even three kinds of chocolate chip cookies. There are probably thousands of different kinds that can range from chewy to crispy to salty to sweet. Some are nutty, some gooey, some cakey, some doughy, and the list goes on. The trouble is finding the right one.

I have tried several chocolate chip cookie recipes. One of the favorites I constantly go back to is David Lebovitz’s Salted Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies. Another one that I have had some success with is this Smitten Kitchen recipe. The point is that there are many and today I chose to attempt an extremely involved recipe. This particular recipe was from Butter and Brioche, a blog that I admire greatly both for the recipes and the beautiful styling of the photos.

The result was a crispy, thin, chocolately, and salty cookie. This cookie was on the rich side due to the heavy serving of both bittersweet and milk chocolate chunks. But as long as you have a big, cold, glass of milk, it hits the spot. I can also say that I have never before put an egg wash on a chocolate chip cookie, but it totally works in creating a crispy glaze over the top of the cookie. You can find this recipe here, but see below for my results.

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in food, photography

Hostess in training Valentine’s Day Edition

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February 5, 2016
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With the house coming around the corner, it’s really time to brush up on those hostess skills. And what better challenge than an adorable Valentine’s dessert? And what better adorable Valentine’s dessert than a red velvet cupcake?

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Red velvet is a craze. It’s a trend. It’s hip. But most of us don’t care about that. Most of us just care that it tastes delicious. Or many of us just consider it a cream cheese frosting delivery system. But these scrumptious cream cheese frosting shovels are not so easy. It’s a science really. It’s literally exactly like a volcano science experiment where you mix in some baking soda with vinegar. Supposedly to make the batter airier and fluffier. If you believe in things like that. science.

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in inspiration

Style Inspiration: NYC Restaurant L’Amico

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December 27, 2015
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These days no matter where I am, a restaurant, a coffee shop, a clothing store, a friend’s house, all I see are possible design ideas and inspiration. This was no different at L’Amico, a bright, modern farmhouse of an Italian restaurant with an open kitchen and wood everywhere.

What I noticed upon entering the restaurant was that I loved everything about it. It made you feel hip and yet at home at the same time. The front wall of windows had been retracted so that the whole restaurant was open to the busy streets of Midtown Manhattan and yet it still felt cozy. I began collecting observations so that I could understand how this ambiance was created.

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Open Kitchen: You can see the chefs hard at work in the background of the photo above. It was essential to me when choosing a floorplan for my own home that the kitchen be open to the family room. To me, a kitchen is a family room and they should naturally just be parts of the same room. This is how you achieve that feeling of warmth.

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