RECIPE: How to make the perfect American cookies

Now that I’m marrying an American, I feel like I should brush up on my cookie baking skills. When I was a teenager a real American mom gave my family a cookie recipe that I have been using ever since. I only really came to appreciate how good this recipe is the other week when I was craving cookies at about 10pm, and, because I didn’t have my usual cookbook to hand, I had to use any old recipe I could find. Now call me lazy or arrogant, but I really believe that if something I bake goes wrong it usually the recipe’s fault. A good recipe is straightforward, tried and tested; as long as you follow it, you are supposed to get good results. (A really good recipe has built in room for slight error and improvisation.) Anyway, these cookies were a disaster. They were flat and completely splurged into one on the baking tray, and they tasted disgusting and salty.

The recipe I’m about to share with you, however, is the best. You can use it as a base and mess around with flavourings, add different types of chocolate chip (in the batch I made last night I used crunchie bar, malteasers, caramel dairy milk, and M&Ms). It’s okay if you look in the baking cupboard and discover you don’t have any vanilla essence, or you mess up and use part self raising, part plain flour. It’s what they call a ‘fool-proof’ recipe. I’m going to learn it by heart so I never have to use a different one again.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.

Cream 4 oz (half a cup) of soft, room temperature butter with 5 tablespoons of soft brown sugar and 5 tablespoons of white caster sugar. Stir in an egg. Add half a teaspoon of vanilla essence, and half a teaspoon of baking powder. Add 8 oz (1 cup) and 2 tablespoons of plain flour (although last night I used half plain, half self raising and they came out well), and half a teaspoon of salt. Blend well. Add lots of chocolate chips – you can be creative here and smash up your favourite chocolate bars to put in the cookies.

Tear chunks off the dough and roll into smallish balls. Space these well on baking parchment and cook in the preheated oven for 8-10 minutes. Take them out when they are still soft and are just going ever so slightly golden around the edges, because they carry on cooking out of the oven for a while and you want them to be a bit gooey.

The trick to telling whether you’re on the right track in the cookie making process is whether or not you are eating the dough. If the dough is irresistible, the cookies will be good, too.

Coming soon | On The Road and The Great Gatsby

I’ve got got goosebumps from watching this magnificent trailer for On The Road, Walter Salles’ adaptation of Kerouac’s classic novel, and I can’t wait to see the trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s version of The Great Gatsby, set to be released in cinemas in December.

I recently wrote a piece about literature and fashion for the Alliance of Literary Societies‘ annual members’ journal. You can read the full piece here, but here’s an extract:

The fact that the 20s and 50s were post-war eras of economic boom in the US (in salient contrast with our own time), where decadence, along with a certain frenetic energy and nostalgia for the past marked the fashion trends of the day, makes the two heroes of these classic novels doubly attractive to the fashion world today. Imitating the style of those decades is a kind of wish fulfillment, escapism, precisely because of the financial depression we now find ourselves in. Luhrmann’s new film of The Great Gatsby will be in 3-D. However you feel about 3-D cinema, it just goes to show the extent to which the director wants to push the aesthetic world of Fitzgerald, bringing the textures and colours alive. The visual element of Fitzgerald’s work has always been important, and this year sees his aesthetic influence reaching from the page to the screen and onto the catwalks and viewers – or readers – themselves. Fashion is, in many ways, the physical embodiment of ideas, of an ethos.

Fitzgerald’s descriptions of Gatsby’s parties evoke images that are incredibly familiar to the fashion world: ‘the air is alive with the chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other’s names.’ It could, after all, be a scene from any London Fashion Week party. The Jazz Age and the Beat Generation portrayed in The Great Gatsby and On The Road may be solid enough visual cues to draw the fashion industry into imitation, but their philosophy and their heroes remain tantalisingly out of reach; the ultimate fashion icons, in fact. They are awful in their moments of degradation: when John Galliano was exposed for making anti-Semitic remarks last year, no one in the fashion world knew how to react. We never actually want to see through our heroes, because in them we see what we might wish to be – they represent precious ideals.

High fashion, then, is the communal stamp of approval upon something that must go on to become a very personal quest. Fashion is simultaneously something that is, and is not, learnt. Gatsby’s gypsy butterfly girls flitting from group to group in their ‘gas blue’ silks and pearls are on this personal quest, chasing something elusive on the spray of champagne. Sal and Dean are on this quest, catching a glimpse of America as they wind down the windows and make love to the night as it pours in over the dashboard, lifting their sweaty palms in an ecstasy of rhythm as the trumpet player blows his heart out in a grimy club. It is something you can’t ever quite put your finger on, but you know it when you see it. The worlds of fashion and literature have this great Aesthetic Mystery in common.

The trouble with politics, or, The Obama myth revisited

There has been a lot of Obama hero worship going on recently what with his coming out in favour of gay marriage and all. People have been calling him ‘brave’, and presenting him as some kind of champion of equality. This seems ridiculous to me. If this is what he believes, why has he changed his tune now? Why didn’t he say this from the start? Surely he’s only doing it now because he’s already alienated the anti gay marriage crowd with the contraception mandate and so is trying to win back waverers on the Left. It’s not that I am against someone changing their mind on an issue (or ‘evolving’, as everyone is calling it). It’s just that there’s nothing brave about giving the people who are most likely to support you what they want. He’s not losing any votes he might have had, not really. That ship already sailed a while ago. He’s only winning back the admiration and support of people he might have otherwise lost if he had carried on sitting on the fence. Make no doubt about it, he was under a lot of pressure from within his own party to do this. The election is approaching, and he had to do something big, he had to make a statement.

I hate saying this, I really do. I was just as excited about Obama back in 2008 as the next person. He seems like such a nice guy. An intelligent, friendly, funny, well read, eloquent guy; such a refreshing change from George W, who seemed like an illiterate buffoon next to Barack. I would like to sit next to him at a dinner party. One of my ‘Favourite Quotations’ on Facebook is from ‘The Audacity of Hope’: ‘[Empathy] calls us all to task, the conservative and the liberal, the powerful and the powerless, the oppressed and the oppressor. We are all shaken out of our complacency. We are all forced beyond our limited vision.’ Finally, I thought, a politician who sees the subtlety of situations, the nuances, who will consider things on a human level and not just think like all the other power grabbing good-for-nothings in politics. But the problem is, we all idealised him too much. You have to get your hands dirty in politics, and he’s no different from the rest.

A recent timeline by ProPublica compares the Bush and Obama administrations in terms of torture, surveillance, and detention. When you think what a reputation Bush had for being a trigger happy war-mongerer, it’s scary to see how Obama has continued and furthered what Bush started. Obama has upped the drones, and despite declaring his intention to close Guantanamo in 2008, he backed out of this in early 2011. I know people who voted for him because it seemed like he might put a stop to the illegal detention and torture of unproven terrorist suspects. His change of tack on this is a scandalous betrayal of American trust.

So yes, if you are pro-gay marriage, by all means celebrate this moment. But remember that a healthy dose of cynicism probably wouldn’t go amiss, either. There’s a great deal of less-than-savoury tactical manoeuvring going on behind this so-called ‘courage’.

Do you think I am being too harsh on Obama? (After all, I do feel bad for the guy – his hair has gone very grey with all the stress of being President… A job I certainly do not envy.) Please do add to the debate and leave your thoughts, below.

Beauty tips from the bees

I’ve raved about the healing properties of manuka honey before, so it won’t come as a surprise that I am a huge fan of Manuka Doctor‘s foaming cleanser. I first tried it out a couple of months ago when I was looking for something a little less sticky than the actual honey itself, but that had the same gentle cleansing and soothing effect. It rather frighteningly declares that it uses ‘purified bee venom’ on the front of the packaging, but don’t worry bee lovers, as this video explains, no bees were harmed in the making:

Much as it does gross me out a little – okay, quite a lot – apparently bee venom is the magical ingredient that helps to promote skin regeneration, keeping it soft and subtle whether you’re looking for something to calm blemishes or combat ageing and fine lines. I didn’t realise it until I looked at their website just now, but the Duchess of Cambridge reportedly swears by the rejuvenating skin mask. Better than botox. (Just don’t try it if you’re allergic to bees. Obviously.)

Is hair removal sexist?

You’ve got to hand it to her, Emer O’Toole (the young woman who appeared on This Morning recently to talk about why she decided to stop shaving 18 months ago) has guts. My reaction was complex and has bugged me ever since, so I’m going to try and break it down. It went something like this:

1) That’s a lot of hair. I don’t even know what my arm pit hair looks like beyond about a week.

2) Why is my reaction disgust if this is natural?

3) I shave because I want to for myself, not because I want to look good for other people. Or at least I think I do.

4) Oh crap, what if I’ve been indoctrinated into thinking this natural thing (hair) is bad and shouldn’t be seen or talked about and we should all be as hairless as babies all the time by a sexist society that tells women we all have to conform to a certain ideal?!

Okay, so I think I’ve untangled (oh I’m sorry, these awful puns just slip out) the issue a little bit. Caitlin Moran is pretty wise about hair removal, her main point being that because of the widespread use of porn, society has unhealthy expectations about it all. Women should remove hair, if they do, because they want to, and not because they feel pressured to by a society that tells them that they’re repulsive if they don’t.

I would tend to agree; the reaction of intense disgust is worrying, but at the same time I don’t think we should all stop shaving our armpits. (Your collective relief is palpable.) Hair removal has been around since the Egyptians and the Romans, if slightly dodgy general knowledge and internet sources are to be trusted. Apparently, they used to use an early form of waxing called ‘sugaring’. We all – men and women – take care of ourselves to a certain extent; cut our fingernails and our hair, and wash. Throughout history, grooming has changed quite a bit and certain weird trends have come and gone (mutton chops, anyone?), but generally women are less hairy than men and so to accentuate that is to arguably accentuate our femininity in the same way that dressing a certain way, putting on marscara and lipstick, and doing things to our hair accentuates our femininity.

I suppose what I concluded from the brave Emer O’Toole’s example is that while I can’t get away from the fact that I do think it looks, well, just a lot nicer, to shave your armpits, it would be nice for society to calm down about women’s hair, generally. For it all to be a bit more normal, and less airbrushed and porn star-y. That goes for cosmetic surgery, too. As the old hackneyed phrase goes, we all need to be a bit more happy in our own skins. It would be nice if, for once, someone like Julia Roberts could get away with not shaving her armpits and for people to just not really care.

Frances Ives, illustrator extraordinaire

The Place des Vosges is my favourite place in Paris, perhaps even one of my favourite places in the world. When my boyfriend proposed to me there, we decided to commission a watercolour sketch of it by the lovely Frances Ives for the wedding invitations. I’m going to frame the original – my first piece of commissioned art, how grown up!

After researching various different invitation options I realised if you have a beautiful, unique image, you can print some simple postcards very cheaply. I have some friends who are freaks for paper thickness and weight, but I personally think it’s worth investing in the perfect, personal illustration and cutting costs on the actual printing.

Frances’ style is quite flexible and she’s a genius for putting your ideas onto paper. I love her loose, pretty watercolour sketches (she even adapted the colours to the tones in my bouquet!), but another friend of mine commissioned a more detailed painting of a Spanish building (above) which was also beautiful.

Frances did a degree in Illustration at Kingston University in London, and takes commissions starting at £50. Her website is currently under construction, but you can see some more examples of her work on her blog. Contact her on frances@francesives.com for more information.

My eco-wishlist | Linda Mai Phung and People Tree

I’ve raved about Linda Mai Phung before – she won the Paris Ethical Fashion show award last September. Well guess what kids, she launched her e-shop the other week, so now her beautifully tailored ethical bright silks can be yours. Oh, but the prices are in euros, so you might need a currency converter. ‘Like’ her Facebook page to stay up-to-date with news, prizes, and special offers. She does smart, elegant, fun work and evening wear better than anyone else on the high street.

KATJA racer back silk tank top, 85 euros, LEA pleated linen shorts, 95 euros

EMILIE pleated flare linen skirt, 85 euros

In other ethical fashion news, People Tree have just launched a gorgeous limited edition cherry blossom necklace. Retailing at £15, for every necklace sold they donate £5 to fundraising efforts for communities in Japan affected by the tsunami.

TREND | Lace

It’s everywhere I look. Pretty, blossom coloured lace, Zara copies of Valentino girlish Audrey Hepburn-ish dresses, modest high necklines and glimpses of sylph-like legs. Maybe it’s the association with Victoriana and fluttering fans, but there’s something irresistibly flirtatious about lace; the way it simultaneously conceals and reveals.

While Valentino and Louis Vuitton gave us pastels and sugar bright colours for a Summer replete with broderie anglaise, waists cinched in with skinny belts and feet wearing barely-there sandals, this pretty sweetness gives away to a more solemn look for the Autumn. It just shows the versatility of lace that two seasons in the same year could use it in such different ways. Collette Dinnigan’s Autumn/Winter show was decidedly more tough than Valentino’s collection: this may have had something to do with her knee-length embellished lace socks, which had an air of the gladiator sandal about them. Erdem’s latex lace gives a twist on the traditional, too. Francesca Marotta’s Baroque-inspired Autumn/Winter collection is full of drama, with a red lace cape and high collared black lace shirts. And then there is Marchesa, with sumptuous gold embellishment and regal lace making dresses more appropriate for hem-kissing than anything else.

But for now, it’s Spring and the colours are soft and giddily sweet. I found this beautiful late 1950s lace shift dress for £25 in Portobello Market last year, and I can tell it’s going to stand me in good stead not just for this year, but for many to come. I like to wear it with a black satin bow belt from H&M. Lace making has been a treasured skill in Europe for centuries, and really, when you think about it, it never really goes out of fashion.

Planning a wedding with style… and then some

Going to the chapel, baby… Oh, if only it was that simple. I used to think that people suddenly became possessed with strange expensive desires for ridiculously pricey puffy dresses and over the top parties the moment they got engaged, and that all of that would never happen to me. Now I’ve dabbled my little toe in the ocean of wedding planning, I have discovered how hard it is to stick to a tight budget even if you have very modest wishes for your ‘special day’ (I wish everyone would stop calling it that, too – does anyone else find that a cringe-making phrase?). Suddenly I understand the appeal of a) elopement and b) waiting till you’re 35 and have saved up for it for 10 years.

But before I go any further, let me make a pledge to you, lovely Style & Then Some readers: with my wedding coming up in October, I promise to keep the obsessing to a minimum and only share things I think might be useful, interesting, and/or amusing. You might have to hold me to this promise. I have heard strange things happen to people when they’re getting married, and I’m worried the wedding sirens will get me and cause a personality transplant, too, before my time is out. Tie me to the mast and block your ears with beeswax.

First things first – the ring. Diamonds and precious stones in general can be tricky from an ethical perspective, and then there’s also the fact that diamonds lose such a large part of their value as soon as you walk out of the shop with them (worse than cars, a dealer once told me). A solution that is ethical, relatively affordable, and beautiful? Go antique. You’ll find gorgeous unique rings in every antique shop starting at as low as around £70 if you’re lucky. If it’s too big, resizing is always an option. My fiancé bought me beautiful 1920s ring, and I couldn’t imagine a more perfect one if I tried. (Plus he was accidentally super on-trend.)

I have to say, Pinterest really comes into its own when planning a big event like a wedding. A virtual pinboard that you can share with friends and family and use to collect together ideas for colour schemes, themes, flowers, dresses etc, it’s mainly just a lot of fun, and a good place to store links to things you’ve come across when googling things like ‘fairy lights to hire’ and the like. (Be warned, though – it’s thoroughly addictive.)

I suppose the most exciting – and daunting – thing is the wedding dress. This is meant to be the best dress you ever wear, your red carpet moment, the dress that makes you feel like your most beautiful self. That’s a lot of expectation pinned onto one dress, and I have to say I’m finding it all a little intimidating. The prices are astronomical, and it’s amazing how many truly hideous dresses are out there. I’m still in the baby stages of looking, so for now I’ll just say I love Tephi‘s style, and am hopeful that Minna might be able to help me out with an ethically made, affordable and non-meringuey dress. Let the quest to find the perfect dress begin…

PS For some great wedding-on-a-budget tips, read my friend’s post about it, here.

Savile Row’s row with Abercrombie (and the likes)

Pardon the horrible pun, I couldn’t resist. Given my recent musings on the Abercrombie/Hollister brand, I found the news that The Chap magazine is launching a petition to stop plans for another Abercrombie & Fitch shop to be opened on the hallowed ground of Savile Row rather amusing. I imagine they were rather taken aback to discover they were considered to be below the standard for this exclusive area of London, given how keen they are to cultivate a sense of exclusivity to their brand. They did, after all, recently pay cast members of Jersey Shore (the American equivalent of Geordie Shore) not to wear their clothes onscreen.

The Chap magazine has a point, though. Savile Row is one of the few remaining bastions of good old-fashioned fine tailoring skill, and its bespoke suits have been hailed as the best in the world for over 200 years. With big brands like Abercrombie inching onto the scene, these traditions are under threat.

The petition will be formally presented to Westminster council, and has over 500 signatures already. David Coleridge of H. Huntsman & Sons said, “The arrival of Abercrombie & Fitch at the end of Savile row would dramatically change not just the tone but the safety of the street”.

In a letter to Boris Johnson, The Chap editor Gustav Temple, said: “Once that store is allowed to exist, there is no reason why other large chain stores, also peddling overpriced casual wear and T-shirts bearing slogans, will begin to fill up the other buildings.” It seems he’s right – according to Drapers, there has been a similar furore over the hipster brand The Kooples, who also want to open a shop on the street.

“This isn’t simply about resisting the global spread of chain stores, which market forces have made inevitable. It’s about preserving a little corner of Englishness in London. It’s only one street, for goodness’ sake, and why shouldn’t it remain exclusively dedicated to bespoke tailoring?” asks Temple.

If you want to help save Savile Row, you can sign the petition here.