The girls realize that it is great to have friends and they are a lot like cupcakes you can't have enough and they are good in all combinations.

Alexis thinks the Cupcake Club feels incomplete—until she discovers that friendship comes in many flavors. Alexis feels lonely and left out when Emma goes away on a family trip. Sure, Mia and Katie are her friends too, but without her BFF Emma to round out the group, Alexis feels like a third wheel. Then when Ava comes to visit Mia, Katie is the one who feels like she just lost her best friend. Eventually all the girls realize friends are like cupcakes—you can never have too many!

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?

Mia learns to balance style and substance when she has to get glasses AND braces. Fashionista Mia gets some unflattering news from Katie’s mom, Dr. Brown: She needs braces. And just when Mia thinks things can’t get any worse...they do. Her teacher is concerned that Mia is squinting in class. A trip to the opthamologist confirms it: Mia needs glasses, too! Mia is miserable until her stylish mom comes to the rescue with a plan and a very chic middle school look. And her wonderful Cupcake Club friends reassure her that glasses and braces don’t get in the way of all they really see: the same old Mia.

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.

When Emma is successful while modeling in an advertisement, she realizes it is a lot tougher than she thought.