Alexis And The Missing Ingredient

Feeling like a third wheel in the Cupcake Club when best friend Emma goes away on a family trip, Alexis bonds with Katie while Mia spends time with a visitor, a situation that helps all the girls to discover the benefits of sharing friendships with multiple people. Simultaneous.

Alexis has true friends in the Cupcake Club—which is a good thing, because everyone else is calling her names. Everyone in the Cupcake Club was thrilled when mean girl Sydney moved away, but the new girl, Olivia, is even worse than Sydney was! Every time she passes Alexis in the hallway, she says something nasty to her. And if that wasn’t bad enough, she also has all the girls in the Best Friends Club making jokes about Alexis! Alexis has no idea why this is happening...until she remembers an offhand remark she made to a friend about Olivia. It wasn’t meant to be mean, but did Olivia take it the wrong way? If Alexis is willing to shoulder some blame, will Olivia call off the teasing campaign?

Can the new Fashion Club be the icing on the cupcake for Mia, or is she in over her headshot? When fashionista Mia hears someone is starting a Fashion Club at school, how can she resist? But can she manage to take part in two clubs at the same time? And what will her Cupcake Club friends think about this? Worst of all, Mia’s frenemy Olivia Allen wants to be in charge of the Fashion Club. Can Mia and Olivia make peace long enough to survive a fashion show?

Katie needs the help of her friends to cope with the changes of her mother getting a boyfriend and when she gets an e-mail from her dad saying that he wants to meet her.

The Missing Ingredient is about what makes good food, and the first book to consider the intrinsic yet often forgotten role of time in creating the flavours and textures we love. Written through a series of encounters with ingredients, producers, cooks, shopkeepers and chefs, exploring everything from the brief period in which sugar caramelises, or the days required in the crucial process of fermentation, to the months of slow ripening and close attention that make a great cheddar, or the years needed for certain wines to reach their peak, Jenny Linford shows how, time and again, time itself is the invisible ingredient. From the patience and dedication of many food producers in fields and storehouses around the world to the rapid reactions required of any home cook at the hob, this book allows us to better understand our culinary lives.

Alexis gets a taste of sibling rivalry in the latest addition to the Cupcake Diaries series. After Alexis receives a stack of “practical” birthday gifts, she decides it’s time to change her image. She wants to be more like her carefree, popular older sister, Dylan. So, she tries out for cheerleading, without really thinking about what that entails. Not only that, Dylan was a star on her cheerleading squad, so all Alexis hears is “Dylan, Dylan, Dylan!” It’s time for Alexis to stop comparing herself to her sister and find her own special talent.

French Guy Cooking is a YouTube sensation with half a million subscribers. A Frenchman living in Paris, Alex loves to demystify cooking by experimenting with food and cooking methods to take the fear factor out of the kitchen. He wants to make cooking fun and accessible, and he charms his viewers with his geeky approach to food. In this, his debut cookbook, he shares 90 of his absolute favourite recipes, some of which feature step-by-step photography – from amazingly tasty toast and pizza ideas all the way to some classic but super-simple French dishes. Along the way, he offers ingenious kitchen hacks – a cheat's guide to wine, five knives you need in your kitchen, the secret to brilliant ramen – so that anyone can throw together great food without any fuss.

Emma's younger brother Jake has tonsillitis and makes life difficult for Emma, while the Cupcake Club girls are spoiling him with cupcakes and little gifts.