I'm now in the final stages of building my book out. Over the past few weeks I've been working with my designer and writer to finalise the layout, copy, and imagery. We've settled on final fonts and colours to make the book as cohesive as possible. I've also put together the index and bibliography, which makes me feel like it's finally a real cookbook! Below are some screenshots of a few pages of the book to be able to view how each page is working together as a unit. 

Overall it feels pretty cohesive, but I still need to make a few edits and tweaks to the images and layout. I'm quite happy with how it came out, and feel that the level of planning and production that I put into this in the early stages really helped me to make the book come to life as smoothly as possibly. Much of it went on without any hiccups. The area that was the most challenging was definitely the recipe creations. As I'm not a trained chef, simply an at home cook, there was a lot of trial and error in getting the proportions right on a lot of the recipes. The Buckwheat Crepe Cake in particular was a battle to make taste good without being able to use butter, milk, and sugar.  

What I struggled the most with in building the book itself was deciding on the colours. I was very clear upfront about the general palette I wanted with the reds and yellows, but actually deciding between the shades and variations was quite a process! In the end, I'm satisfied with the direction I took, and feel it is the right blend of classic French mixed with contemporary Baja California. Each element in my imagery adds on to this theme: the tiles and linens, style of lighting, choice of colour in the plating, and drinks and propping.