Honey & Jam

Honey & Jam is either a baking blog with really good photographs, or it's a photography blog with delicious-looking sweets recipes. Whatever your opinion, it's a beautiful and inspiring site produced by a multi-talented 19-year-old design student.

Hannah, Honey & Jam's creator, started the blog in a fit of creative frustration late one night two years ago. In search of an outlet, she decided that blogging would be fun, but waited to launch her site until she could come up with a name she loved. When Honey & Jam popped into her head, she was ready. 

The blog is best described as a place for Hannah to express her dual passions -- food and photography. It's tough to tell which one she's more excited about. She mostly cooks up other people's recipes, such as a creamy Pistachio Rice Pudding adapted from the LA Times or her version of Alton Brown's Cherry Almond Granola Bars. She recently started writing her own recipes, and from the looks of her Morning Glory Oat Muffins, she knows what she's doing. In addition to the food, there are Hannah's Things I'm Loving... which have recently included photographs of cows grazing and an old picture of her father with her as an infant. This, like everything else on the site, is sweet and personal.

Hannah takes all of the photos, which are clean, bright and look just like the professionally-styled images from the fancy monthly food mags. She sells them online too, here. At 19, Hannah is unusually accomplished but modest about her talents. She chalks this up to practice and observation: "Observe the light coming into the room and the way other people do things," she says. "It's not about copying; it's about learning from them. I have come a long way since I first started my blog and I still have a long way to go." We're happy to take the ride with her.