So it’s official. My third cookbook SWEETS is in stores now (so far only in German, sorry for teasing non-German speaking readers, please bear with me) and while I couldn’t be any happier about just that, today started with a BANG! But wait.
***EDIT February 22nd, 2013:
Hi there! Thank you so much for your heartwarming comments, I am sooooooo happy you liked my Sweets preview! And I have good news – there are not three but five enhanced eBooks for you! This tool helped me to determine the winners – they will be notified via email over the weekend and then receive their promo codes for the iTunes store.
Congratulations Hamleys, Anja, Maximiliane+Julian, Simon, Ramona – have fun with Sweets!***
There is a bit of a history to this and I think I owe you some information about the book itself. The general idea for SWEETS was developed back in 2009, when I was going through numerous recipe folders and realized that the balance between my sweet and my savory favorites was way off. Not really surprising, after all my family jokingly refers to me as Naschkatze (an endearing German nickname for a sweet tooth, picture a cute cat nibbling away at sweets) from as early as I can remember. So when I talked to my editor Sabine about it, an idea was born and I eagerly began working on an especially sweet book concept.
By Murphy’s law, shortly afterwards my friend Coco approached me with yet another fantastic concept. A book about gifts from the kitchen. And since we all agreed that this was THE subject of the moment, SWEETS had to be put on the back burner. A little heartbroken I saw my sweet project go south, but the prospect of working with my friend Coco more than compensated for it. And besides: the fact that our jointly produced book Geschenkideen aus der Küche (gift ideas from the kitchen) already has been reprinted 3 times (plus an extra special edition), since having been published in 2011, proves that our decision was right on.
Back to SWEETS: 2011 and 2012 were filled with more sweet recipe testing, more than I would have ever imagined possible. We – and our neighbors – were living on the edge of a major sugar coma. BUT I LOVED IT. Since I had agreed to cover the photography part as well, I was scouting props, building mood boards and filling my kitchen aka “the studio” to the brim when not working on the recipes… those were busy times! But it is all worth-while, the moment you open your very first copy, gently touching the paper, examining the photo quality and not wanting to change a thing. Hopefully you will like it and the well-loved recipes it contains, as much as I do!
The book has seven different chapters starting with breakfast time, coverings snacks, lunch, teatime, garden parties, desserts and nighttime treats, beloved classics and fancy new creations, something for all seasons, beginners and advanced cooks, you get the picture? As long as you have a sweet tooth, you’ll be all set, promised!
After finishing SWEETS by the end of 2012 the master plan foresaw nothing. Simply a lazy January, which never came to happen. My publishing house had decided to publish SWEETS additionally as an enhanced eBook (e.g. with steps galleries, shopping list functionality, additional information etc.) and we were back in the kitchen studio again. A huge THANK YOU goes out to the electronic publishing unit of Gräfe und Unzer, who supported me tremendously. Not only by publishing this enhanced eBook, but also making it especially pretty and usable.
Now… ‘remember the BANG I mentioned in the beginning? One, that easily made my morning coffee high look like a joke? Well, an email informed me that Apple picked my enhanced eBook SWEETS as their weekly recommendation on the German iTunes store front page! *gasp – I think I might faint or happy dance, or faint after the dance*
Soooooo, if you speak German, own an iPad and have an iTunes account in one of the following countries (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland), you have the chance to win one of the three enhanced eBooks of SWEETS I’d like to give away.
All you have to do is leave a comment in which you tell me where you live (city or country), your correct email address (which of course won’t be visible to the public) and what your very favorite sweet treat or recipe is.
Deadline is Wednesday, 20th 2013, 23:59 CET. Winners will be announce on Friday, 22nd 2013 and then receive their promo code via email. There is no right of appeal. Reminder: The book’s language is German only!
GOOD LUCK!
Feb 12th,
2013
My favourite treat is… oh, that's a hard one! I love mousse au chocolat, but it has to be made with really good chocolate. And cakes. In every form there is :)