White Chocolate & Cranberry Cookies

I've always been quite like the Cookie Monster! I really, really enjoy eating cookies, especially when there's chocolate on them! White chocolate & cranberry has been one of my favourites ever since I worked at a summer camp back in 2011, but the last time I had them was long ago... On Friday, I had some free time to bake some delicious cookies! They made me so happy! And, to be honest, they were absolutely yummy!!! So now I'm sharing my recipe with you :)

Ingredients

3/4 cup unsalted butter

1 cup dark brown sugar

1 large egg

2 cups flour

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 tsp cornstarch

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup dried cranberries

3/4 cup white chocolate chips

Preparation

1. In a large bowl, soften the butter and then mix in the sugar until you obtain a creamy and consistent mixture, with a bright color.
2. Add the egg and vanilla extract, to make the mixture humid. Then mix in the flour, cornstarch, baking soda and salt.
3. Stir in the white chocolate chips and cranberries.
4. Leave the dough covered and let it chill for one hour.
5. Preheat the oven to 350 F.
6. Drop balls (the size of a tablespoon) on a cookie sheet and bake for 10 minutes, until they are slightly golden.
7. Let them cool down for around 10-15 minutes and then remove from the cookie sheet.

Some Tips

When I went to buy the ingredients at the grocery store, I couldn't find any white chocolate chips. What I decided to do instead, was to buy plain white chocolate and cut it into pieces, that I added to my dough. Another thing that can be hard to find is a cookie sheet. You can use aluminium foil instead of it if you find hard to find it!

Chilling is essential. The recommended time is one hour, but you could leave the dough chill for up to three days. This will give consistency to the cookies when you bake them.

The baking time is short, although it could change depending on how high away from the ocean you are. I would recommend letting the cookies bake until they are slightly golden. This should take around 10 minutes but, sometimes, it can take a few more (or less) minutes than that.

Love,

Photography: Laura Beltran-Rubio

Let's run away to the countryside!

On Monday, I wrote about how much I like to escape from the world sometimes and do something fun! But I don't like escaping only when I'm tired of studying after a very long day in college... I like escaping every time I can because it's awesome and there's always an excuse to have some fun! In this post, I'm sharing with you my escape out of the city last Sunday.

This time, my excuse for escaping was meeting my friends' baby son. His name is Daniel and he is the prettiest creature in the whole world! Ricky and Lily (Dan's parents) live in a countryside about half an hour away from Bogota. They have horses at home and the contact with nature is just amazing. I'm sure Dan will have an awesome childhood there, surrounded by animals, nature and happiness!

During our short journey, I had the chance to shoot some pictures of the trip. It was really relaxing. Although I'm a big city person, and I love the rush and seeing people everywhere, I do enjoy a bit of calm, which was exactly what happened to me during this trip. It started with an early ride, and it was followed by a delicious (and enormous) brunch. And then we finished the afternoon with Lily and Ricky, and their lovely baby. I wish my weekends were like this more often!

Love,


Photography: Laura Beltran-Rubio

Art Exhibition

Whenever I feel bored and tired (classical feeling on a Monday), I just want to escape from my life and do something different. I'm a university student, which means that time in my normal life is spent mostly studying. But when I try to escape from that routine, I LOVE visiting museums, art and photography exhibitions... This time I decided where our escape should be: to my sister's first art exposition!

My Sister, The Artist

My beautiful sister (who I introduced in this post) is an amazing artist, and she had her first exposition last week. Everything was amazing. The people loved her work, and I've never felt so proud of her before! I really hope this won't be her last exhibition!

Love,






Photography: Laura Beltran-Rubio

Coco, my baby

Ever since I was a child, I remember loving riding a horse. We had a country house with some horses, and I will always remember spending hours riding around the place with my dad. I then convinced him of sending me to proper riding lessons, and a while after that I started show-jumping. And I've never stopped riding after that. I hope I never do!

Coco is my lovely horse, which my mum gave to me a few years ago. He's a bit crazy, but he's definitely taught me lots of different things. I love him and I love grooming him, riding him and going to show-jumping competitions with him! This weekend after my riding lesson, I decided I should do something I didn't do since I was a child: bareback riding! It was the first time I did this on Coco (I never had the courage to do it before, since he's a bit too crazy), but it was amazing! U'm sure I'll do it again soon, and hopefully I'll repeat it lots of times more!

Love,

Neon!

The one thing I like the most about Spring is how everything comes back to life. Flowers blossom again, and colours invade the world again... And after the white, snowy winter, who doesn't want a touch of colour?

Love,

Wind Beneath My Wings

Did you ever know that you're my hero?...

These lyrics from Bette Midler's song Wind Beneath My Wings probably speak on their own. And they are dedicated to one very special person in my life; to someone I love like nobody else: my sister!

She is the most wonderful person on Earth! Really. If you ever had the chance to meet her, I'm absolutely certain you would think exactly the same. She is the one reason why I try to get the best out of me and become a better person. She is the most brave person I've ever met. She's the sweetest girl in the whole world. She's my sister. And I'm SO proud of her. And I love her.

Love,

Birthday Girl

As I told you on my first post, I celebrated my birthday on Saturday. My day started with a wonderful horse riding session, and then my boyfriend took me for brunch. I had an enormous amount of food, but I will never regret. It was absolutely delicious.

Just in case you're wondering what I ate, I might tell you I started with a delicious cup of Mimosa. Then, I had eggs, tomatoes, chorizo and chips. Enormous, but I couldn't allow myself to leave a tiny little piece of it. It was truly delicious! And, to finish, we shared berries and apple crumble with ice cream. This dessert became my favourite the moment I put the first bite in my mouth. I'm definitely learning how to bake it and, when I do, I might consider sharing the recipe with you (so you have to be good readers in order to receive this prize!)

We then went back home and ate cake. It was a shame that we couldn't get my all-time favourite chocolate cake, but it was still delicious. And the best part: eating birthday cake as breakfast on the following day. That might be the only true reason to love turning a year older!

Love,

The Word Game

To be honest, I don't know where this game came from, but I first played it during a dancing lesson. Our instructor wanted to awake out creativity when preparing a choreography. I know it must have existed for ages, and it is quite popular, for sure. My boyfriend even told me there's a part in a movie where ballet dancers play it!

When I played it during my dance lesson, it all started as we graciously walked around the room, while some nice music played at the back. Then, all of a sudden, the instructor would say a random word. As soon as we heard it, we had to stay in a position that represented that word. Fun, eh?

I decided to adapt this game to a photography session, where my boyfriend would would just take portraits of myself making faces inspired by his words, instead of using dance poses. It was a lot of fun, and I really laughed a lot seeing the results!

Chicken – Dinosaur



Excitement – Elephant



Lotus Flower – Anger



Sad – Desperate



Breakdown

Love,