OLD MAN FUDGE

A few weeks ago our beloved Fudge dog took a turn for the worst. He was an old man at 15 years and contently slept for 20 hours a day, enjoyed his morning walk and was generally relaxing through his twilight years but we all knew the day had to come and frankly we'd been waiting for it. We all said our sad fair wells and he went to the vets for one last time, I suppose the positive is I have countless good memories of my first puppy and a few damn fine photographs from the last few years that I'll share below:

NOT PALEO - CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

This idea has been floating around in my brain ever since I posted my Banana Bread photograph on flickr and over the weekend I setup my micro studio (an IKEA cutting board and blanket for backdrop) to start shooting. I found a recipe for chewy cookies and decided on a half batch (because cheat day only comes once a week) then got down to shooting, in case you can't follow along with the photos I've reposted the recipe below:

Ingredients

Serves: 9

• 125g plain flour
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 85g unsalted butter, melted
• 150g brown soft sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 150g chocolate chunks

Preparation method

Prep: 10 mins |Cook: 15 mins

1. Preheat the oven to 170 C / Gas mark 3. Grease baking trays or line with parchment.

2. Sift together the flour, bicarb and salt; set aside.

3. In a medium bowl, cream together the melted butter, brown sugar and caster sugar until well blended. Beat in the vanilla, egg and egg yolk until light and creamy. Mix in the sifted ingredients until just blended. Stir in the chocolate chips by hand using a wooden spoon. Drop cookie dough onto the prepared baking trays, with each cookie around 4 tablespoons of dough (for smaller cookies, drop 1 rounded tablespoonful and adjust baking time as necessary). Do not flatten the dough. Cookies should be about 8cm apart.

4. Bake for 15 to 17 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the edges are lightly toasted. Cool on baking trays for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.