By Maria Duffy. First published on Sunday 16th October 2011. 24 Comments so far.

Tweet Treats – it’s finally here!

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING IS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT. IF YOU DISLIKE GUSHINESS, STEP AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER NOW! ALSO, LET IT BE KNOWN THAT I WILL NOT BE THIS NICE AGAIN!

It’s no secret that I love twitter. Now there are many reasons for this, but a huge part of the love fest is the fact that I’ve made so many wonderful friends there. One of these twitter friends, who has become a real-life friend, is Jane Travers (@janetravers).

Eighteen months ago, Jane had an idea, which she immediately tweeted to a few of us who were lurking in the twitterverse. Her idea was to put together a book of recipes. But it wasn’t to be any old book of recipes. Oh no it wasn’t! It was going to be a book of recipes that people tweeted in 140 characters. It was going to become Tweet Treats.

“What a wonderful idea,” we all cheered. “How brilliant!” came the responses. “You go for it,” we cried. Then we sat back and thought; that will never work! How on earth would we get full recipes, including measurements, oven temperatures, etc, into 140 characters? But Jane proved us all wrong. Coming up with an initial few recipes herself, she spurred us on and we all rose to the challenge. A team of us went to work to help her collect these recipes from tweeters. Then we took it a step further. We decided to chase (not literally, of course!) celebrities and get recipes from them too.

This was my sort of challenge. I loved it. I loved trying to think of a way to be funny or different so that a celebrity with hundreds of thousands of followers would notice me. I first dipped my toe into the Irish waters and was thrilled to get recipes from Miriam O’Callaghan (@MiriamOCal) and The Script (@thescript) amongst others. Then I thought I’d take my tweets across the water and try some celebs over there. I found the best way to get their attention was to be funny (okay, before you say it, I’m not saying I was funny, I’m just saying I was trying to be funny! Sheesh!). So anyway, back to my funniness. I managed to get recipes from Amanda Holden (@amanda_holden), Heather Mills (@heatherofficial) and even the very lovely Paula Abdul (@PaulaAbdul). I was only one of many, who were chasing up recipes but I may have fallen a teeny weeny bit in love with the process!

The first amazing thing about all of this is that Jane Travers worked tirelessly on the project until she’d defied all the odds by actually managing to compile such a brilliant book and get herself a publisher. The second amazing thing is that, despite giving a year and a half of her life to Tweet Treats, Jane is donating all the royalties to a fantastic charity, Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders).

Tweet Treats is a fabulous little book – one everyone should have in their kitchen. It’s not only choc-a-bloc with easy to follow recipes, it’s also a great read for those of us of a nosy disposition! I mean, how does Bobby Ball like his eggs cooked? What does Ryan Tubridy favour for dessert? What does Anthony Cotton like on his steak? Does Philip Scholfield really eat that on bread? Which famous comedian still likes to have toast soldiers with his runny egg and which one has a microwave as a best friend?

Want to know? Buy Tweet Treats. Simples!

Oh and I almost forgot – the lovely (yes, I’m still in gushy mode!) Jane has given me a signed copy of Tweet Treats to give away here. I was going to ask you to predict, to the nearest millimetre, the rainfall in Tasmania for the month of December, but since I’m in a good mood, all you have to do is leave a comment! The winner will be picked at random on Friday.

Maria x

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