2015 Blog Awards: Best-Designed Blog

Maria Nguyen About the Blog
The Art of Plating is the definitive source for food as a form of high art—utilizing form, color, and texture to tell a story and evoke emotions. Feeding the food-obsessed around the world through visually provocative and captivating content, we provide some of today’s most acclaimed culinary innovators the platform to share their vision, passion, artistry, and life stories. Thought-provoking, creative, and always inspirational, The Art of Plating is pioneering the culture of modern haute cuisine. About Maria
As the founder and editor-in-chief of The Art of Plating, I’ve always had a creative mind fueled by my love for art, design, and food. Inspired by my own attempts at cooking and plating, I realized that there was no platform solely dedicated to the artistry involved. So in late 2013, with my extensive background in directing and designing, I launched The Art of Plating as the destination for the hungry and curious.

Susann Probst and Yannic Schon About the Blog
On Kraut Kopf, we create a variety of vegetarian recipes with influences from all over the world. It is important for us to buy and cook seasonal food as much as we can. We also try to be aware of what we eat. To help keep an eye on sugar, dairy products, and grains, which put a strain on our bodies when we eat them too often, we include helpful symbols under each article that show whether the recipe is vegan, gluten-free, or dairy­-free, and if it is prepared with whole grains or without industrial sugar. About Susann and Yannic
We are Susann and Yannic, in love with each other since 2006, and we both live and work as photographers in Berlin. We love eating and cooking, have been living vegetarian for many years, and like to share what we brew in our pots and what finally lands on our plates: Simple, healthy, and balanced dishes for every day.

Virpi Mikkonen About the Blog
Vanelja, launched in September 2014, is a love letter to authentic food, natural flavors, and good life. Vanelja´s mission is to share the pure pleasures of healthier alternatives to delicious treats and dishes. Besides quality recipes, Vanelja is about the whole experience of clean, conscious, and relaxed eating, which are shown through the blog’s design, photography, and videos. Those were also the key factors when planning the design with Vanelja´s visual team, including graphic designers Leena Oravainio and Lotta Nieminen, plus coder Antti Takalahti, who all helped to build Vanelja. About Virpi
I´m Virpi, a 34-year-old recipe artist, cook book author, food stylist, photographer, and writer from Helsinki, Finland. “Clean eating” has been my speciality now for over six years; to me, it simply means happy and healthy food. I love to design and cook grain-free and refined sugar-free dishes with fresh, pure, ecological, and ethical ingredients. I want to give inspiration to people and to be a role model to my 3-year-old daughter by fulfilling my passions, which are the recipes, photos, and videos I share on Vanelja.

Kristan Raines About the Blog
At The Broken Bread, my cooking is indebted to the ever-changing seasons. I love being inspired by the time of year so that whenever I cook, I am using fruits and vegetables at the peak of their flavor. Food has always been a source of joyful activity and fruitful conversation in my life, and I never grow tired of its ability to bring people together and create lasting memories. That’s what I hope to accomplish through my blog. Each dish has a story of its own, and at The Broken Bread I want to share my stories with you. About Kristan
When I was a little girl I discovered my love for baking, and it has remained a passion of mine ever since. Cooking lets my creativity run wild; a few simple ingredients can be turned into a meal that can express love, spark a memory, or set the stage for a lovely gathering. So I created The Broken Bread, a place where I could share my love for seasonal baking and cooking. Thankfully, this pursuit has blossomed into a career, so that I currently spend my time working in freelance recipe development, food styling, photography, and writing.

Lean Timms About the Blog
A tiny atlas of food, travel, and lifestyle, lean + meadow’s drive is to capture and share moments from an appreciated, simple, and slower-paced life. About Lean
I’m Lean, an Australian food, travel, and lifestyle photographer. For the past two years, I’ve been living, traveling, photographing, and cooking around the US. Now, I’ve found my way back home and settled (for now) on the new South Wales South Coast, where I’m still living, still traveling, still cooking, and still photographing. I love autumn fruit, homemade pasta, misty mountains, and meadows.

Phi Tran About the Blog
Since I was procrastinating, I did a rushed job of naming my blog. I’m terribly lazy, so I didn’t bother to fix my error, so now I am Princess Tofu to a certain number of internet readers. Many people don’t realize this, but it’s actually based on a Chinese Dish called Princess Chicken—the vegetarian version of it, in fact. I found it on a menu in a Chinese restaurant during my first year of being vegetarian. However, I don’t actually write about tofu very much and I definitely haven’t written much about Chinese-American recipes. Most of the blog consists of meatless recipes I like to get lost in. I also use it as a way to improve my writing, to explore photography, and sometimes, to share carvings of animals made out of vegetables. About Phi
One Thanksgiving during my high school years, I decided to make the turkey, which jumpstarted my interest with cooking. I wanted more than anything to go to culinary school. Somehow, I ended up in architecture school, after which I got a degree in architecture, and then during my Master’s study at UC Berkeley, Princess Tofu happened; instead of working on my master’s thesis, I chose to start a food blog. The next time that someone tells you procrastination is a bad idea, start a food blog!