Maggie Beer has shared a major announcement.
The 80-year-old Australian chef took to Instagram to reveal her new cookbook The Best of Maggie Beer officially hit the shelves on Wednesday.
Beer’s cookbook features a carefully curated compilation of recipes originally featured in the Australian Woman’s Weekly to celebrate 20 years of her partnership with the magazine.
The MasterChef Australia star donned a summery white frock with drop pearl earrings and wore a smattering of glamorous makeup as she held a basket of lemons on the cover of her new tome.
“For over a decade I have been lucky to share my recipes with The Weekly’s readers, showing that beautiful meals don’t have to be complex,” the chef wrote in the caption.
“To celebrate our partnership, I’ve gathered together my favourite recipes which have appeared in the pages of the magazine.
“Some of the recipes draw from the learnings of the Maggie Beer Foundation, which I set up more than ten years ago to share skills and ideas with the cooks and chefs working so hard in aged care homes around Australia.”
Inspiring pull quotes, a photoshoot showing Beer in a garden, and a sneak peek of some recipes featured in The Best of Maggie Beer, including a delicious-looking pie and a dessert crumble, accompanied the post.
She said she is “determined that, wherever we live and whatever our stage of life, we can all enjoy flavoursome fresh food.”
The admission comes after Beer underwent three emergency operations in hospital for broken bones sustained from a fall down a flight of stairs at her Barossa Valley property in Adelaide, South Australia, last August.
The following December, Beer spoke to The Australian a month after she was released from the hospital and detailed the ordeal.
“I was at home. I was on the way to bed and fell from the top of our attic stairs right down to the bottom,” she said.
“I really did a number on myself. I had three emergency operations, one day after the other, and each time I woke up I would ask the surgeon, ‘Am I going to make a full recovery?’
“They said ‘yes’ every time, and I absolutely believed it, and now it’s true. Yes, there were broken bones, what they call wedge fractures and plenty of other stuff, but we don’t need to go into all that.”
The octogenarian admitted to being impatient while she recovered but learned to be “different” and accept that “things go slowly sometimes.”
Beer’s family announced her fall on Instagram and stressed doctors were confident she would make a full recovery.
“It’s Maggie’s family here. Just writing to let you know that following a fall at her home, she’s unfortunately suffered a couple of minor bone fractures and related injuries,” a statement read.
“Thankfully, Col, her husband, was there, and she is now in the excellent hands of her doctors, who are confident she will make a full recovery.
“It may just take a little while.”
In 2023, Beer told The Australian Women’s Weekly she had turned to the kitchen as a place of comfort after her eldest child Saskia Beer unexpectedly died in her sleep in 2020, aged 46.
