Making excellent use of the Crock-Pot and other labor-saving appliances, incorporating hundreds of shortcuts and tips, and cooking from a pantry of prepared foods--whether canned, frozen, jarred, dried, or fresh from the salad bar--the Dinner Doctor shows how to make over 200 fast and kid-friendly appetizers, salads, soups, sides, and main courses. Take, for example, a can of tuna, and think outside the sandwich: Add beans, tomato, and a vinaigrette, and it becomes a Tuscan Tuna and White Bean Salad. Turn that healthy mixture into a pasta salad with the addition of cooked penne. And make a speedy pasta supper by tossing the salad with sauteed zucchini and a generous shower of shredded Parmesan. Or, whip up a Tuna Noodle Casserole like mom used to make-but faster and healthier-by lightening the traditional cream of mushroom soup with lemon juice and lowfat milk and using precooked pasta and frozen peas. There are dozens of ways to doctor deli-counter basics into stunning hors d'oeuvres. Five quick casserole toppers. Five zippy garlic breads and 30 ways to dress up frozen peas and frozen spinach. And the 15s--15 cold pasta sauces, 15 ways to doctor deli chicken, 15 meals made from summer tomatoes, and more.

It's a marriage made in baker's heaven--150 all-new, all-easy recipes for cakes, starring the ingredient that surpasses all other flavors, including vanilla, by a 3-to-1 margin, and that Americans consume to the tune of 2.8 billion pounds a year. Starting with versatile supermarket cake mixes and adding just the right extras--including melted semisweet chocolate bars, chocolate chips, or cocoa powder, plus fresh eggs or a bit of buttermilk, dried coconut, mashed bananas, or instant coffee powder--a baker at any level of experience can turn out dark, rich, moist, delicious chocolate layer cakes, time and again. Not to mention sheet cakes, pound cakes, cupcakes and muffins, cheesecakes, cookies, brownies, and bars. Rounding out the book are 38 all-new homemade frostings and fillings, and a full-color insert showing every cake in the book.

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 FAQs, 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.