Archive for: ‘Cakes & Cupcakes’

An Ode to Fresh Banana Cake

Apr 24

An Ode to Fresh Banana Cake

When I was a little girl, a chocolate sheet cake or a lemon meringue pie were almost always on the kitchen counter. My mom liked sweets, and she loved to bake. Very rarely she would buy dessert, but one of the rare exceptions was frozen Sara Lee banana cake. I had pretty much forgotten this [...]

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Blueberry Honey Bun Cake

Oct 15

Blueberry Honey Bun Cake

Coffee cakes, casseroles, chicken dinners – to my mother’s generation they were the most used recipe cards, smudged and stained from repeated use. If you could bake a good coffee cake, a hearty casserole, and could fry chicken, you just about had it covered in feeding a family, entertaining friends, and impressing everyone at the [...]

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Chocolate Mint Ice Cream Cake

Jul 27

Chocolate Mint Ice Cream Cake

Having an August birthday might not have been my first choice of months, but as a child, it grew on me. My birthday parties were always outside, always hot, but never without ice cream. Often the ice cream was homemade peach or peppermint, and sometimes, if I begged and pleaded with my mother, she would [...]

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Three Rules of Summer Baking

Jun 21

Three Rules of Summer Baking

Summer is hardly peak baking season. I have bad memories driving with a sliding triple-decker strawberry cake in the car in Tampa on book tour years ago. Now, I am older and wiser, and when summer rolls around I continue to bake and share my cakes at picnics, family reunions, and barbecues, but I follow [...]

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Almond Cream Cheese Pound Cake

Apr 26

Almond Cream Cheese Pound Cake

  The email came from Tricia, but it was similar to many I have received in the last month. How to prepare a favorite Cake Mix Doctor recipe – in this case, the Almond Cream Cheese Pound Cake – with the smaller cake mixes now on store shelves? “Do I need to cut back on [...]

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Last-Minute Coconut Cake

Apr 06

Last-Minute Coconut Cake

At our house the regal coconut cake is anticipated two times a year – Christmas and Easter. Any other times it makes an appearance means someone who loves coconut cake is coming to dinner or mom must have a photo shoot coming up soon! Seriously, we love coconut cake but bake it far too infrequently. [...]

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Anne’s Cinnamon Streusel Coffee Cake

Feb 20

Anne’s Cinnamon Streusel Coffee Cake

Cinnamon coffee cakes were something I grew up with as my mother loved to entertain and bake a fresh coffee cake to share with friends. Or she would bake a sour cream coffee cake to have on hand during the holidays. That cake, as I recall, was delicious – but it was so heavy! You [...]

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Scarlet’s Red Velvet Cupcakes

Dec 13

Scarlet’s Red Velvet Cupcakes

Being a redhead, I seldom wore the color red growing up – lots of green dresses, but I won’t dwell on that here. Now that my hair has softened in color and looks more blond (Mother Nature, I promise!) I bought my first red dress. I had no idea how on-stage you are in red. [...]

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Holiday Pumpkin Cake

Dec 01

Holiday Pumpkin Cake

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think there are enough hours in the day to be the perfect mom. Coming out of Thanksgiving and looking ahead to Christmas, I greet the holidays with joy and a little trepidation. Thankfully, I have no problem taking a few shortcuts. I doctor up cake mix (you [...]

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Cake Mix Doctor Loves Birthday Cake

Aug 08

Cake Mix Doctor Loves Birthday Cake

I’m back in love with birthdays. I used to count down the days to my birthday, even circling a half-birthday on the calendar. Then I avoided them. (This took place leading up to one of those significant birthdays with a zero on the end.) And then last week I woke up on my birthday and realized it’s a [...]

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The Books

The Dinner Doctor

The Dinner Doctor

The doctor's back, and now she's curing dinner woes! Anne Byrn, the award-winning food writer and author of The Cake Mix Doctor and Chocolate from the Cake Mix Doctor does for dinner what she did for dessert-shows how to take common, convenient supermarket ingredients and turn them into meals that taste like they're made from scratch.

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Anne's Cake Mix

Anne’s Old-Fashioned Yellow Cake Mix

Anne’s Old-Fashioned Yellow Cake Mix

Put on your favorite apron, plug in the mixer, and get ready to bake some memories. I've dreamed of creating a yellow cake mix that gets its color from butter and eggs, not artificial colors, and its scent from Madagascar vanilla.

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