Bake day part deux!

I'm back with the update on the final bakes! Sara came over again today and this helped me finish up the whole thing (Can I mention how honestly amazing of a friend she is!! I had a lot of fun baking with her and I'm super grateful for all of her help) 

Anyway the first thing we did was prepare the icing for the already made cookies, using a recipe my mom gave me, and then Sara showed off her drizzling skills once again by drizzling the icing to look like the stripes in the Harry Potter ties. Overall they were by no means perfect but I think that's what makes me love them even more.

Then we moved on to the butterbeer, which we did last in order for the whipped cream to come out as best as possible and topped with butterscotch chips.We also tried to accessorize it with some Harry Potter merchandise I had lying around.

We retouched the pizza bites by adding more sauce and more freshly melted cheese and then we were ready for group pictures!!!!!!!

I'm absolutely in love with how everything turned out and it was pretty much exactly what I had thought it would be!

Bake day!

Today was our bake day, and unfortunately my friend Kira couldn't make it so it was just Sara and me. The plan originally was to have my parents go get the ingredients early so I could have everything mostly measured out and prepared by the time Sara arrived but due to unforeseen delays I wasn't able to do that since my parents came home right before she arrived around late afternoon ish. Still we made the best of the time we had and got baking. 

The fries came out beautifully!!!! We topped them with salt and pepper and took photos of them in a large bowl (I even used a trick by padding the bowl with paper towels to make it look fuller and make the fries pop out more) 

This was one of my favorite pictures of it!

Then we moved on to the pizza bites, and I made a small mistake then by actually attempting to roll out and knead the puff pastry, rather than just cutting it out of the already rolled out dough, luckily we had two sheets. Second time's the charm I guess!

After that we moved on to the popcorn, in which Sara showcased her amazing drizzling skills and also had a joking idea that I ended up adding to the recipe. I had some Lilo and Stitch chocolate molds that she thought would be fun to use and so we ended up ditching the chocolate drizzle and just added little chocolates on top of the caramel (or in this case butterscotch) corn, making it more of a snack mix instead. The chocolates didn't turn out perfect but they were definitely cute and fun!

We made the dough for the cookies then, but we realized it was getting kinda late and Sara had to head home. Luckily she was already coming over tomorrow and said she'd love to help continue this so we'll have to finish the group photos then. I'm posting this pretty late so I should probably head to bed but will be back with an update tomorrow!

While working out the layout of my two page spread before I take my images, I remembered a magazine I saw while working on an activity in class. It was a thanksgiving magazine and I think it gave me a good idea of what exactly I want my two page spread to be like.

 Having a large image of the whole layout first Andrei then having another two page spread for each food item puts a lot more work on my plate but it allows me to focus on each item and their own recipe and have a really nice full image of the whole thing as well I like the idea of also giving little tips on the specific food item and how best to prepare it, which I will most likely do on the individual sections.

Also there's fun news! My friends Kira and Sara are going to help me with the making of the items and the photo taking next Tuesday, so we'll all get to have fun and hang out while doing so!

Since I do not have any images to work on my two page spread, I've decided to at least start working on the layout and formatting of my table of contents. I decided that for it I really want to do a nice comic book style so I looked up a couple of images like this for reference.

I really liked the yellow boxed text so I figured I'd use something similar to that and then put my different articles in boxes mug like the comic panels above. I had some images of other foods I'd already done beforehand that were well taken so I figured why not use some of those to start making it and laying it out. This is what my first page looks like so far without some of the images that I don't  have yet.

The reason some don't have titles yet is because it's been a bit difficult to think of titles without seeming really repetitive. Also I just now realized that I forgot about the page numbers but I'm going to add them inside the image. I'm unsure if I should make space for a small description of the article as I've seen good magazines do because I fear it might make it seem way too cluttered, but overall I really like the look of this page and I feel like it came out exactly how I wanted it. 

The two page spread I have planned is something along the lines of "The best snacks for a great watch party". It's going to contain a couple of recipes but they will all be fairly simple and easy to pull off for anyone. I've looked up some recipes for what I want to do, and I've kind of modified them to either make them simpler or use less ingredients so I don't have to buy as much to make them.
1. The first item I thought of was fries and I found this recipe, which allows you to make them without frying with oil by using an air fryer, which is a lot less complicated.
2. The second item I thought of was pizza bites, and instead of having to prepare the dough I thought I'd find a recipe that uses puff pastry, which you can get already made. This recipe was what I decided I'll do.
3. The third item was caramel corn, and for this one I've decided not to use a recipe as I saw that most were made by heating up sugar and that's a lot more complicated than I want, so I've decided to just make popcorn and cover it with melted chocolate and butterscotch.
4. The fourth item was a drink, and for this case, I've chosen on of the most iconic drinks which is Harry Potter Butterbeer. In this case I'm also not going to use a recipe as from all of the ones I looked at, they used too many things including heavy cream when it really wasn't necessary. My version is going to be cream soda mixed with melted butterscotch chips and ice cream mixed in (plus whipped cream for decoration.
5. The fifth item is going to be sugar cookies, and since I've done an item themed on Harry Potter, I figure I'll decorate those in the colors of the Hogwarts houses. I'll be using my mom's recipe for those  since it's absolutely delicious. I plan on baking everything during my spring break because I'll have a bunch of time and am not going anywhere.
I'm pretty excited to make all of this! It'll be pretty fun to try out these recipes!

To make my masthead original, I figured I'd make it  from scratch from the sketch I posted earlier. I used the Microsoft Autodesk app and a stylus pen to trace over my original design with the color palette I chose.

The only thing that worries me about it is my fear that it'll look kind of unprofessional. I tried my best to make it as neat looking as possible but I might not use it if I find it looks too strange. The peer review we are doing next week is probably really going to help me with that. I'm using Joomag to create my magazine, so I had to remove the background from my logo and place it there.  I used an app I found on my phone called Background Eraser and luckily it didn't lower the image quality.

Seeing these two options side by side I definitely prefer it on the side and tilted like it is in the first image, it seems a lot closer to that comic book style that I'm going for with the entire magazine.

I've found another YouTube channel that has given me some idea inspirations. It's called Rosanna Pansino, and the creator has a series called Nerdy Nummies and focuses on recipes inspired by popular shows, movies, and other forms of media. Her recipes can sometimes be simple, but a lot of them can also tend to be complicated. A thing I enjoy about her tutorials is how she always encourages her audience to have fun and customize the recipe im fun ways that they like. This has given me the idea to possibly do a recipe based on something with multiple variations, for example: Hogwarts houses, where depending on which one you have you could customize the recipe to be a different house theme. I also think the different house crests are very stylish and have fun eye popping colors that could certainly give a nice aesthetic.

Now that I've thought about the masthead font and some ideas, I realized I also needed to think about colors and their visual appeal. I certainly want to make it colorful and bright, but not to the point of it being garish.
The colors yellow and red can increase appetite in the viewer, and are also widely used in comic books which matches my theme, so I could use those as my main colors in my masthead ad potentially my cover page. I used a color palette generator to get some visually appealing color combinations and these were my favorites:







These all have a brighter red and yellow that would pop out more and while the other colors are more subdued they fit and are still really nice to look at, matching that comic book style pretty well.

Here are some sketches of what some of my title font ideas are:

This one is in a more comic book style and I think it really pops. The border also really makes it exciting and appealing to the audience.

This one i think is my least favorite. I tried to go for a 3D more geometric style look but I don't think it would be the best.

This is a more bubble letter style and I like how its more simplistic and still kinda bouncy, fun and laid back.

Title font ideas:

Since my magazine is going to be for a young audience and is going to be based off of pop culture and media, I think it'll be best if I make my font be fun and colorful. The first idea that I have is to make it in a sort of comic book text style and these were some examples I saw that could fit what I'm trying to go for:

These are fun, eye catching and I think they really fit the theme I'm going for so I'll see if I can figure out a font I can make inspired by these.

Masthead thoughts:

I'm having a bit of a dilemma, as I wanted to start looking for some different font ideas and ways to format my masthead and cover page, but I can't seem to think of any titles that I could give my magazine. I want it to sound fun and inviting, to attract new readers to try out cooking and check out the recipes inside.
I tried looking at some examples for inspiration like, Bon Appetit, Taste, Tasty, Delicious Dishes, and Good Food. It seems like most are very to the point and simple but I think I just keep overthinking mine. I need to just state what the magazine is like front and center i guess.

Welp, something really funny just happened. Just as I was typing this out I came up with a title. I think I actually really like it.
My masthead is gonna be Fan Foods!
I'm glad I came up with it cause now i can start brainstorming some style aspects and how it will look which is going to be a lot of fun!