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It's spring, our dogwood trees have burst into vivid pastel, but ironically our minds are elsewhere. We are inside, glued to CNN or reading the newspaper, absorbed with these brave men and women serving our country in Iraq. Thankfully, many POWs have been released. But many more loved ones still worry and grieve. I feel humbled to write this note to you just now, as far nobler acts are being done to preserve our precious freedom. But I do feel that cake baking strengthens the American spirit in its own way. Baking a cake makes you feel good, it reaches out to others with whom you share your cake, and it strengthens home life. There is nothing more comforting than a hug and a cake baking in the oven.

So, this April, in honor of our troops, I share with you a wonderful cake to bake now or file away for a festive Fourth of July gathering. It's an American Flag Cake, based on a wonderful and rich vanilla sheet cake, slathered in vanilla frosting, and then decorated as best you can with stripes of fresh sliced strawberries and stars of fresh blueberries. (I know it is not perfectly correct in that the stars are supposed to be white on a field of blue. But for this cake, take a little culinary license with those stars blue and that field creamy white!) Tote it to a picnic, to work, to school, then enjoy, reflect, and pray for peace. Happy Baking!
Anne

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Thanks to all of you who took the time to offer feedback on the new features you'd like to see at on the site as we prepare for The Dinner Doctor, the third book in the wonderful series. We'll do all we can to make your requests a reality. In the coming weeks, we'll be testing new features, so stay tuned to the Community Board for news and updates. As always, please write me if you have any suggestions or questions about the site: info@workman.com

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Doctoring Store-Bought Icing

Seeing that the Community Board has had such fun with the topic of store-bought frosting, and everyone has shared their tips for making store-bought taste homemade, I decided to have a go at it. I found:

• You can enhance any frosting off the shelf by beating some confectioners' sugar into it, say 1/2 to 1 cup to make it fluffier.


• For cream cheese frostings, stir in 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 2 1/2 tablespoons cocoa powder, or 1 heaping teaspoon grated orange zest.


• For vanilla frostings, add a smidgen of peppermint extract, 18 to 20 drained and chopped maraschino cherries, 1 heaping teaspoon grated lemon zest, or 1/2 teaspoon pure almond extract.

Easter Cakes
If you are short on time to prepare an Easter dessert, consider one of my favorite springtime cakes from The Cake Mix Doctor (book 1):

• Snickerdoodle Cake, page 121. We also bake it with a yellow cake mix, and often a cream cheese frosting.


• Strawberry Cake, page 64. Omit the coconut and pecans for little ones.


• A lemon cake such as the Apricot Lemon Chiffon Cake, page 386, or the Lemon-Lime Cake with Pineapple Curd, page 158.

American Flag Cake

As homespun as those flag pins you make with red, white, and blue beads strung across a safety pin, this cake can be baked today or baked on July 4. It is rich and moist, and the berries on top add just the right amount of freshness. My kids prefer it to strawberry shortcake! But because those strawberries are so juicy, you will want to add them just before serving as their juices will run deliciously down the sides.

Serves 16 to 20
Preparation time: 25 minutes
Baking time: 40 minutes

Cake:
Vegetable oil spray for misting the pan
Flour for dusting the pan
1 package (18.5 ounces) butter recipe golden cake mix
1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, at room temperature
4 large eggs
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Frosting:
8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, at room temperature
3 3/4 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
3 to 4 tablespoons milk
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Topping:
2 pints fresh strawberries, rinsed, patted dry, hulled and sliced lengthwise
1 pint fresh blueberries, rinsed and patted dry

1. Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly mist a 13- by 9-inch pan with vegetable oil spray, then dust with flour. Shake out the excess flour. Set the pan aside.

2. Place the cake mix, cream cheese, eggs, water, sugar, oil, and vanilla in a large mixing bowl. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed for 1 minute. Stop the machine and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat 2 minutes more, scraping the sides down again if needed. The batter should look well blended. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, smoothing it out with the rubber spatula. Place the pan in the oven.

3. Bake the cake until it is golden down and springs back when lightly pressed with your finger, 38 to 42 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and place it on a wire rack to cool 20 minutes. Run a long sharp knife around the edge of the cake, invert it onto a rack, then invert it onto a long serving platter so that it is right side up.

4. For the frosting, place the butter in a large mixing bowl. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed until fluffy, 30 seconds. Stop the machine and add the confectioners' sugar, 3 tablespoons milk, and vanilla. Blend with the mixer on low speed until the sugar is incorporated, 1 minute. Increase the speed to medium and beat until light and fluffy, 1 minute more. Blend in up to 1 tablespoon milk if the frosting seems too stiff. Frost the top and sides of the cake with smooth clean strokes.

5. Place 50 blueberries in the top left hand corner of the cake to resemble the 50 stars. Make 6 rows of eight blueberries and squeeze 2 more blueberries in. Then, arrange the strawberries in horizontal rows for the red stripes, allowing a white frosting space in between the rows. If there are leftover strawberries, serve them to the side. Slice the cake and serve.

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Q. I own a coffee shop. I had never baked anything in my life, and just three weeks after getting your book I was doing chocolate pudding Bundt cakes with a ganache topping, a beautiful strawberry cake, lemon cakes and more. But here is my problem--lack of time. Can you tell me the right materials and techniques for freezing finished cakes or unfrosted cake sections?
—Neil Crateau, Knoxville, TN

A. Kudos to you, Neil! Here are some things I have learned about freezing baked goods:

1. Choose the best freezer you can, preferably a chest freezer that will not be opened routinely. The refrigerator and freezer combination is the worst scenario as it is more frequently opened, the freezer heats up, the cakes continually thaw and re-freeze.


2. Then, don't leave them there longer than 6 months, preferably no longer than 3 months, best if no longer than a month.


3. Unfrosted frozen cakes turn out nicer than frosted and frozen cakes. The frosting loses something in the process. Cream cheese frostings get watery, and beware of add-ins like crushed strawberries that might get mushy and watery in freezing. For your purposes I would freeze only the layers, then let them thaw, then frost.


4. Double wrap. Wrap those layers in heavy duty aluminum foil, then place then in plastic zipper-lock bags or plastic boxes with snap-on lids suitable for freezing.


5. For best thawing, open the foil, and let the moisture escape while the layer thaws on the counter. The layer will taste less gummy this way.

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Look for the Ghiardelli Brownie Mix at Costco (4 packages to a box). With chocolate chips in the dry mix, all you add is water, oil and an egg. I could not believe how great this mix was. And yet, I could not help myself from doctoring it up a bit, adding a teaspoon of vanilla and crumbling pecans on top before the pan went into the oven.

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Sharon Bird of Stanford, CA, reports that she made the Peaches and Cream Cake, page 70, from CMD book 1 and made "a simple enhancement that was delicious!" Before putting the whipped cream frosting between the layers, she spread a thin layer of seedless raspberry jam on the bottom layer.

John Thyen of Waunakee, WI, says that instead of adding a can of cherry pie filling to the Chocolate-Covered Cherry Cake, page 50 in CMD book 1, he adds blueberry pie filling. And instead of semisweet chocolate chips for the frosting, he uses raspberry-flavored chocolate chips.

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We were preparing recipes for photography from the upcoming Dinner Doctor book recently, and the stylist mistakenly used raspberry gelatin in the Blackberry Wine Cake. It became a raspberry wine cake, was shockingly hot pink, very retro, and people clamored for a bite. With a dollop of whipped cream, a spoonful of fresh raspberries this was a great cake.

Do you have any great cake baking mistakes to share, times when all you had was a spoonful of this or that and whammo, a great cake? Send them to Do Tell/Great Mistakes and I’ll share those with all of our newsletter readers this summer. Please send to anne@cakemixdoctor.com

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Baking with summer fruit, the super-easy and requested Lemon Curd Cake, those great cake mistakes, and more of your questions and my answers.

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