Spending time with Jess Hemmings is like a meditation. She is so laid-back, and very considered, “its my temperament to take things slow”. This slowness comes with a messiness that is equally as laid-back as her temperament, she describes herself as a “total mess”. She is a total mess, she’s making banana loaf and there is flour everywhere. But she’s got such a cool and calm nature you don’t even see the mess, and she is completely unfazed by it.

I met Jess properly while she was working at Welcome Eatery. Before that, prompted by a mutual friend, we connected through Instagram over a love of spoon making. From there Jess as a photographer and stylist has used my work in her shoots, and I have used her amazing skill set to shoot and style my products, and through all that we have become friends.

Jess is unbelievably creative, I love the way she quietly works merging colours together, making arrangements out of things that aren’t typically used, and playing around with light. The balance she achieves through different textures, colours, and objects feels so unique. I love working with her, it always feels very special, you know you are going to get something very genuine and completely thought out.

Jess’ fine precision, now displayed in styling and photography, was first realised back when she was at school. Her mind was blown at the sight of her home economics Teacher flattening out a cup of flour with the back of a knife to make it an exact cup. Jess was a real sugar fiend, and this little trick was the gateway to a world of sugar possibilities, and so she began to master the accuracy needed for baking. Her go-to was chocolate cake. After making it a few times she became skilled enough to know exactly how to tweak it to make it more to her liking. An extension to her crowd pleasing cake was chocolate cake truffles. She would roll the half baked chocolate cake dough into balls and dip it in melted chocolate to give it that hard shell. Real genius. Now when she bakes she’s not as precise as she was as a kid, but she’s got years of experience behind her and now likes to be perfectly over rather than perfectly exact. Which is still pretty precise if you ask me.

Apart from sugar and baked goods, Jess had no particular interest in food as a kid. She pretty much ate chicken nuggets wherever and whenever possible, she once tried her best to order them for breakfast at a pancake spot. It has been in the past few years that she has really become interested in food due to the time she has spent working in hospitality. She was amazed by how the food the chefs would cook for staff lunches were so simple but so full of flavour. Baking was easy to master as the ingredients and method are all there, if you follow it exactly it’s fool proof. In the environment of hospitality she really began to understand the balance needed to make something simple taste really good.

It seems as though the same energy Jess uses to experiment and create in her work is the same energy that she puts into her food. The precision that got her as a child is so evident in her work today. The lunch Jess made for Jiho and I was such a heavenly balance of comfort and fresh contrasting flavours. She considered every aspect of how each dish was going to come together. From which spatula she was going to use while making each dish, to how the colours of her dessert were going to turn out, through to how the table was going to look. She even chose a completely square loaf of bread for the toasties because she knew it was going to look better on the plate. Her attention to detail is mind blowing. I am so excited to see how she continues to create her world.