I’ve been working like a madwoman on the new book (if you missed yesterday’s post introducing the topic with loads of cute pictures, be sure to check it out), and this week, I’ve made a lot of progress. Good news for all of you who have been asking me ever-so nicely when the book is coming out. My goal is to have it finished within the month, so you’ll have plenty of time to make your miniature summer foods while it’s still…well, summer. 😉

Those of you who have bought the rest of the Dollhouse Chef Series are probably pretty familiar with my process by now, but in a nutshell: I come up with the table of contents, start writing the projects and photographing the steps, create a layout and drop all of my content into it, and obsess over the final details until the book is ready to launch.

Today was all about photographing, and I’ll be working on more of the writing tomorrow. By the end of next week, I should have pretty much all of the content ready, and then it will be time to work on the layout.

Here’s a little sneak peek at today’s photographing frenzy.

First off, here’s a juicy grilled steak with peas, carrots, and a baked potato with plenty of butter.

Then we have a platter of grilled shrimp with a teriyaki glaze served on a bed of rice.

For peanut lovers, there are skewers of tender chicken satay with spicy peanut sauce.

And because you can never have too many foods on skewers, there’s also a plate of beef and sweet pepper kebabs with an herbed dipping sauce.

For dolls who need to up their veggie intake, we have two salads: the first, a cobb salad with bacon, bleu cheese, lettuce, tomato, avocado and hard-boiled eggs; the second, a salad Niçoise with green beans, herbed potatoes, tuna, black olives, tomatoes, and hard-boiled eggs.

The herbed potato salad is a bit blurry, but you can see the pasta salad in the foreground with its little pieces of bow-tie pasta, each individually sculpted.

The new book will show you how to make all of these foods, along with the foods pictured in yesterday’s post and a dozen or so more. To get an update (and a discount) when the new book is released later this month, be sure to sign up for my mailing list. As a bonus, you’ll get a bunch of free tutorials when you sign up, so it’s a win-win.