Cooking web notes

About the book:
The Cake Mix Doctor is in! And the prescription is simple: By doctoring up packaged cake mix with just the right extras--a touch of sweet butter here, cocoa powder there, or poppy seeds, vanilla yogurt, sherry, eggs, and grated lemon zest for the Charleston Poppy Seed Cake--even the least experienced baker can turn out luscious signature desserts, time after time. The proof is in the taste, and the taste never stops--from Toasted Coconut Sour Cream Cake to Devilishly Good Chocolate Cake; from a to-die-for Caramel Cake and a Holiday Yule Log to cheesecakes, coffee cakes, sheet cakes, pound cakes, bars, brownies, and those all-important frostings, here are 175 fast, foolproof recipes that will transform the art of home baking in America.

Who could believe these cakes came out of a box? Moist, tender, rich, deep, and complexly flavored, without a hint of artificiality, each cake stand up and delivers. But without any of the fuss of baking from scratch. Anne Byrn, an award-wining food writer and self-described purist, creates recipes that employ a cake mix's strengths--convenience, ease-of-use, dependability, and almost imperviousness to overbeating, underbeating, overbaking, and underbaking.

In addition to the recipes are the Cake Mix Doctor's Q&A's, extensive "Doctor Says" tips, lists--15 Beautiful Birthday Cakes, 15 Cakes That Will Cash in at a Bake Sale--and more, all illustrated in a full-color photographic insert.

The idea behind this book is good, if you use cake mixes. There are some innovative and fun ways to doctor up cake mixes so that they taste homemade.

I don't use cake mixes anymore (except for two recipes: Lemon Sheet Cake and Turtle Brownies), and I think it's just as easy to mix up a cake from scratch, as it is to add a bunch of stuff to a mix.

However, for someone who only uses cake mixes, I think this is a great book. For someone who cooks from scratch, it's a waste of time, unless you want some different ideas for flavored cakes and you can just add some of the extras to your tried and true scratch recipes.

You can purchase your own copy here.

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2/5 Stars