New Work! Recipe Illustrations for Cleo Magazine Australia

This is awesomely exciting: I was contacted recently by the lovely people at Cleo Magazine, in Australia, who really like my recipe illustrations and wanted me to produce some more for a feature in the September issue! Amazing!

So I allowed them to reproduce two of my old ones, and did two new ones for them as well, which I want to post up here:

This recipe is one from my mum - she always makes this at BBQs and get-togethers etc and it's so amazing (as the title suggests), and pretty easy too. The feta and the capers make it stand out against shop-bought couscous, it's perfect for summer days!

 I've made this a few times and it is easy - the ready made cake mix is a bit of a cheat so sometimes I do make it from scratch. Using the orange juice instead of water is genius and they taste amazing - especially the next day when the orange zest has had time to sink into the icing and give it flavour.
 Nom nom nom.

So these illustrations will be in the September issue of Cleo, out in August. If (like me) you don't live in Australia then you won't be able to get your hands on a copy, but I have some friends in Oz who hopefully can send me it!

This is the first time my work has been published onto actual physical paper so I'm really happy. It's just on an exposure basis but who knows what could come from this? Good times! Thanks Australia, very random but cool!

Guest Post on Domestic Sluttery!

Totally exciting news; today I've been featured on the awesome blog, domesticsluttery.com! :D

For those of you who don't know about the domestic sluts, where have you been? I've been following them for a good few months now, and they've been taking the home & lifestyle world by storm in their own stylish way. Their About page describes them best:

"Domestic Sluttery: The home and lifestyle blog for women who have better things to do.

Women don't have time to decorate, or to spend hours in the kitchen. We work, we go out and we have fun. We basically live our lives and would rather shag than do the dishes.

But that doesn't mean that we don't want our homes to be beautiful. If anything, they mean more to us because the time we spend at home is more precious."

Pretty rockin', I reckon, and simply the best name for a website, ever. And definitely the way forward. I'm all for endless pretty things, as well as having time to you know, have a life!

They are of course advocates of the life-saving properties of the humble cupcake, so to aid my obsession with drawing and eating said cakey-bakeyness, I dropped them a line to see if they'd like an illustrated recipe :)

Click on image to enlarge so you can read the instructions.

Christmas is a mere 5 weeks away, so it's time to crack out the food colouring and get festive with this christmas cupcake recipe! I like to illustrate my recipes with as little text as possible, letting the images speak for themselves and to create a really rich and inviting recipe that I think feels more cosey and easy to make than food photography does.

I've had some really amazing feedback on the guest post already through twitter - here are a few of the comments. Seriously, made me feel very warm and fuzzy, thanks to everyone. If anyone has a go at the recipe, please let me know @rachillustrates! Would be great to see.

I've done a few more illustrated recipes which you can see on my website, click here. Also, there's a few more hanging around on this blog too, in a more sketchy sort of form.

I love doing these and will do lots more in the future, maybe some kind of savoury based substance next as I might end up in a constant state of sugar high.

Food illustration is just one area that I love working in; I am of course available, as always, for illustration commissions on any project you can throw at me, especially ones involving cakes and pretty things. Just drop me a line!

I'm now off to gush about Paperchase's newest offerings... it's always a financial mistake to let me loose in that shop.

Cakey Bakey: Choc Chip Cupcakes with Fudge Frosting

It's national chocolate week! So to celebrate I made the most chocolatey cupcakes in existence. Be warned - these are not for people who utter that insane phrase 'Oh, it's far too chocolatey for me...' Personally I can't understand that - I have never tasted anything that is 'too' chocolatey. There is no such thing! You crazies.

But for those of you who appreciate chocolate, these are for you. Use GOOD quality chopped chocolate or choc chips, the darker the better. Dark dark dark.

Fairly simple, it's just the frosting that can take a while - I so nearly ate all the cupcakes before I'd even put the frosting on!

This recipe is from the amazing book by Elinor Klivans - The Essential Chocolate Chip Cookbook. Buy it from amazon. It's full of recipes all about chocolate chips - there's some brilliant cookie recipes in there. Do it now.

Here's one I ate earlier.

Hopefully this will be up on Recipe Look later, as I'll email it in.

For my apple & cinnamon muffin recipe, click here.

For all my posts about recipes, including my illustrated recipe book, click here.

These illustrations are mine, no nicking without asking!

Recipe Look

I was told about this site aaages ago by Tom, the creator of Recipe Look, when he commented on an old post about my illustrated recipe book.

I then went 'that's a really great idea for a site!' in my head, and then... didn't do a lot about it. But my illustration yesterday about the muffins I made reminded me about it, and when I had a little look again, it's going really strong.

Here's what it's all about:

"Are you fed up with normal recipes and their pesky, text based formats? Do you want to see some life breathed in to your lunchbox inspiration, some spectacle in your spatchcock chicken? Recipe Look is here to save you supper time. It’s packed with interesting food ideas and they’re all drawn out by hand, so you can easilt see what you have to do. What’s more, you have the chance to make your own ‘recipe look’ and send it in to us. We’ll simply make it the right size and stick it on the site; you’ll be famous in minutes!"

Which I think is a great idea - I do love food illustration and illustrated recipes and it's really inspiring to see loads of recipes submitted from all over, as well as how people are drawing them - the idea is to use the least amount of words as possible so the recipe comes across purely in the drawing.

This is the most recent one from the site, sent in by orboc:

So that's the basic idea. I'm going to email the muffin recipe in so you might see it up there soon.

It would be nice to have coloured/arranged the recipe in Illustrator as doing something hand drawn never comes out exactly the way you wanted it to. But I am still Mac-less and have only MS Paint at my disposal. Yeah... not ideal.

Soon. Hopefully. Probably not :(

Cakey Bakey: Apple and Cinnamon Muffins

I do love a bit of baking. Mainly cupcakes or muffins - should probably branch out more often. But then , who doesn't love muffins? These are great autumn treats - just as the leaves are all falling, it's getting a bit cold and you're digging out your jumpers, mourning the death of summer.... all you need is a bit of cinnamon goodness to cheer you up.*

*apparently some people like autumn. Everything's dying and it's getting cold, I don't understand you. Must. Have. Sunshine.

I made these yesterday, and I must say, they're one of the best things I've made in a while. Eat them straight from the oven - the muffins are best warm and toasty! (Not straight from the oven.. you'll burn your hands.)

Here is the recipe, Rachel style:

Quite easy really, you only need one bowl and you basically shove all the ingredients in there. This recipe makes 6 but I doubled up 'cos.... well I wanted to.

Inside gooeyness. They're pretty moist so last for a while. Check out the apple pieces. Mmmm. Appley. The cinnamon/brown sugar topping is the winner really, goes all crystallized so you get a bit of crunch with the goo.

Let me know if you make these! :D

Also, while on the subject, I decided to start keeping all my recipes for cakey bakey goodness together in a hand written scrapbook. Hence why that recipe is written on nice paper; I've started going slowly through all the recipes that I usually use and writing them down, hopefully with most of them being illustrated. Some of them I'll probably just stick in from random scraps of paper I have lying around. Kind of for my benefit really but it'll be nice to have in the future.

There's this amazing chocolate roulade that my mum makes that I must steal.

Semester 2: (Negotiated) Recipe Project

I'm very aware that I finished Semester 2 about 3 months ago. However I haven't had access to Photoshop to convert these files into blog-friendly formats, until I finally cracked and downloaded a 30 day trial. Which is a pain to install and uninstall but I won't get access to it until September aka start of third year madness. So there we go.

Student Recipe Book:

I loved doing this project, Negotiated projects are always the best because you can do what you want :) So I decided to design and illustrate the front and back cover, and 2 double page spreads, for a fully illustrated recipe books for students. Illustration and cooking; pretty much my 2 favourite things haha.

The front and back cover with spine.

Double page spread with recipe for a lovely Risotto :)

Same type of spread for a chocolate mousse recipe. Thanks to Gordon Ramsey for that one! Yum yum yum.

If I'd had time I would have loved to do the entire book, with about 20 or so recipes. Maybe one day.

As usual, all images are copyrighted to me and myself only.