Baking Macarons: The Swiss Meringue Method ~ Excerpt

By Lisa Maliga, copyright 2018

From the INTRODUCTION

Baking Macarons: The Swiss Meringue Method covers the simple techniques you’ll need along with the best type of equipment you should have to bake lovely macarons. You’ll also learn how the weather makes a difference, why you should invest in a digital kitchen scale and oven thermometer. I’ve spent lots of time, money, and hard work to get these recipes right. They are all unique and some are more suited to those who like their macarons sweet and others who enjoy their macarons with a little less sugar and are more classically flavored.

The Swiss method is for any level of baker providing you carefully read each recipe thoroughly along with the helpful suggestions.

When you have the ingredients weighed and sifted, the egg whites separated, and the baking trays lined, it’s time to bake macarons, Swiss style.

Official Description:

Baking Macarons: The Swiss Meringue Method

This unique cookbook is designed for bakers of all levels. Follow each carefully detailed recipe and bake stunning macarons that will impress any dessert lover.

Helpful information includes the best ingredients and equipment to stock your kitchen, resources, tips and troubleshooting, plus the easy macaronage technique that will save you time and energy.

With a photo of each recipe, Baking Macarons: The Swiss Meringue Method, offers everything you need to bake beautiful and delicious macarons. It features 20+ new tried-and-tested macaron recipes.

Some of the flavors include Minty Chocolate, Speculoos [Cookie Butter], Raspberry Cheesecake, and Apple Spice macarons.

Official release date is September 5, 2018.
Available at these fine bookstores for pre-order.

Amazon link: Baking Macarons: The Swiss Meringue Method
PAPERBACK: Baking Macarons: The Swiss Meringue Method [NOW AVAILABLE]
Amazon UK: Baking Macarons: The Swiss Meringue Method
PAPERBACK: Baking Macarons: The Swiss Meringue Method [NOW AVAILABLE]
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Notes from Nadir ~ Manic Monday Excerpt

By Lisa Maliga
Copyright 2013

eBook cover

It’s 2009. Lisa Hansen is impacted by the great recession and can’t focus on her writing career. She has to make the tough decision to stay in Los Angeles or return to her former Midwestern home. Not having seen her mother in over a decade, she moves back in with her in a suburban semi-retirement community. Confronted with long forgotten memories, Lisa finds it difficult to adjust to life in Nadir. She works a couple of dead end jobs, and meets Gordon, a sexy British bakery owner. An opportunity to freelance for him and work as a writer/photographer at The Factory ensures a better income. But how long will she be confined in a lifestyle that she has long outgrown? “Notes from Nadir” is an alternatively poignant and amusing story of life’s unforeseen journeys, sorrows, and rewards.

Where is Nadir?

Merriam-Webster defines nadir as "the lowest point." And that is where Nadir is located. It’s not a place that is found on any map. No GPS will guide anyone there. Nadir is a state of mind.

Notes from Nadir is approx. 88,000 words/292 pages. The release date is Tuesday, November 5, 2013. Both eBook and paperback versions will be available on or around that date.

Chapter 47 ~ Manic Monday

[This is a brief excerpt from the chapter].

Right before lunch one of the Packers came over and announced: "Bakery donuts downstairs in the warehouse … main door!"

On a Monday? Rita smiled and turned to me, "That's great! They sometimes donate donuts from the bakery down the street. It's really a great place…" she got up and was heading for the stairs a lot faster than I'd seen her move since I began working there.

I followed her; I could walk faster than her as I didn't wear a size 18. I knew her size because she saw a pair of large black pants on my cart and said they'd fit her and placed a bid on them. She didn't win them as some other fatso from Nebraska did.

Near the main door I saw a big flimsy pink cardboard box on top of a dilapidated table. It was surrounded by red shirted employees.

Most of the warehouse employees didn't wear gloves. They spent the day handling pee-stained rugs and bedding, cast off toys and games, old electronics, mildewed books, filthy furniture with chewed up legs and torn upholstery; all manner of junk. And they were pawing through the donut selection. Not a napkin or paper towel in sight. But that didn't stop Rita or any of the other workers. A toothless worker wearing a faded, almost pink shirt decorated with holes, licked his fingers. Free food, free dessert, and free germs!

Paperback link

Notes from Nadir: The Second [Expanded] Edition

NOTES FROM NADIR the second edition will be available in eBook and paperback formats on November 5, 2013. 

It has been updated and expanded and is approximately 290 pages/88,000 words.

"Notes from Nadir" is an amusing and poignant look at a Los Angeles-based writer who returns to her Midwestern home due to financial difficulties. Moving back in with Mom in a semi-retirement community, she looks for jobs that pay far less than the wages she earned back in L.A.  From working at a bakery where she hopes to get to know the boss a little better, to finding a job at an online auction site, the author introduces us to a wacky assortment of characters. Along the way, she deals with Mom's declining health, unsympathetic relatives, and rediscovers a place she left many years ago when she dreamt of becoming a screenwriter. The narrator struggles with being in Nadir, both the place and the state of mind. 

A new excerpt will be posted next week.

eBook cover

Paperback cover

If you would like an ARC [PDF] so that you can post a review on your blog or on an online bookstore, please send me an email at: Lisa_Maliga@msn.com 

Paperback “Out of the Blue” is Here!

Are you the kind of reader who likes to turn pages instead of click arrow keys? Do you like to hold a book instead of a computer or eBook reader? Do you prefer being able to use a real bookmark to mark your place? The good news is that my coming of age novel, OUT OF THE BLUE, is now a “real” paperback book!

How did I come up with the idea for this title? Well, it involved a little jaunt across the ocean. I took some time off from work and traveled around England for several months. Staying in London was too expensive so I went north – to the Cotswolds. There I stumbled upon a small village inn that served as a model for the Windrush Arms Hotel.

The village did boast a “television personality” a man nearing retirement age who had once upon a time been in two long-running British telly shows. I'd never heard of him but the way he was treated by the locals clued me in that he was “a somebody.” The barmaid was a young Italian woman who was also traveling around and improving her English. I later learned that she took up with the “television personality” but I never learned of their fate.

I wondered what if the actor was a little more known internationally? And what if the young woman who was interested in him was American? Thus, the beginnings of “Out of the Blue” were born.

Much of the action takes place in a small, scenic village in the U.K. It’s the late autumn of 1981, and the Princess of Wales was expecting Prince William. You'll find no mention of cell phones, Prince Harry, i-anything, 9-11 … back then people actually smoked in pubs and ashtrays were even provided.

OK, without any more of an intro, here's the official blurb:

Sylvia Gardner is a naïve cashier who lives with her psychologically abusive mother in Richport, Illinois. Vivian Gardner repeatedly tells her daughter not to trust men because they only want to use her. Upset with being dumped by her first boyfriend; Sylvia later falls in love with an English actor after watching him on a PBS drama. For two years, she researches Alexander Thorpe's life and career, saving her money to travel to his Cotswolds village, intent on meeting him. Staying in the village's only inn, she gets room and board in exchange for working at the Windrush Arms Hotel.

Alexander is going through a career crisis, as he wants to continue making art films. He still hasn’t embraced the notion of “going Hollywood.” Additionally, the walls of loneliness and booze are closing in due to a long stint between acting gigs.

Complications ensue when the drunken hotelier, Harry Livingstone, takes a fancy to Sylvia. As in her fantasies, Sylvia and Alexander get together—but with unexpected results. 

Amazon: Out of the Blue

Amazon UK: Out of the Blue