Beginning with a useful discussion of cake mixes, their history and composition, and an outline of the mix-transformation battle plan, the book then presents the recipes in chapters such as "Chocolate Cakes," "Cake-Mix Classics," "Special Occasion Cakes," and "Incredible Bars and Comforting Cookies." Among the most successful offerings are Deeply Chocolate Almond Cake with Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting, Banana Cake with Quick Caramel Frosting, and Lemon Buttermilk Poppy Seed Cake. A chapter devoted to crumbles, crisps, cobblers, trifles, and even a dessert pizza shows how to use the mixes in innovative ways, and "Lighter Cakes" presents "healthier" offerings, such as Pear and Toasted Pecan Buttermilk Cake. With sidebars such as The Legendary Pillsbury Bake-Off and tips for success throughout ("Cinnamon is one of the great tools to use when doctoring up cake mixes," begins one), the book explores every aspect of cake-mix fixing while revealing the unexpected richness that the process can yield. --Arthur Boehm

Book Description
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.

Where do you get the best crab cakes? Ask one hundred different people and you'll likely get one hundred different answers. Some swear by classic Chesapeake Bay crab cakes, and some by spicy Creole crab cakes, while others maintain that Pacific Northwest crab cakes can't be beat. In I Love Crab Cakes!, award-winning chef and cookbook author Tom Douglas brings the best of East, West, and Gulf coasts to the table and proves that the most delicious crab cakes of all come straight from your home kitchen.

Tom thoroughly examines every thorny, crab cake–related issue. Bread crumbs, cracker crumbs, panko, or no crumbs at all? What kind of crabmeat: Dungeness, king, or Peeky Toe? Are the best crab cakes pan-fried, deep-fried, or not even cooked?

Tom offers up dozens of his famous crab cake recipes, including classic crab cakes from East and West, North and South, plus newer innovations such as Wild Ginger Crab Cakes, Pesto Risotto Crab Cakes, and Crab Louie Cheesecakes. There are crab cake sandwiches, breakfast crab cakes, and crab cake sauces and salsas.

Tom Douglas, a Delaware native, grew up on blue crabs steamed with loads of Old Bay spice, but he later moved to Seattle, where Dungeness is king. For the last twenty years, Tom's Dungeness crab cakes have been one of the top-selling dishes in his popular restaurants. Along with his wife and business partner, Jackie Cross, Tom owns four of Seattle's most exciting restaurants: Dahlia Lounge, Etta's, Palace Kitchen, and Lola, as well as Dahlia Bakery and a catering business, Tom Douglas Catering and Events. Tom is the author of Tom Douglas' Seattle Kitchen, which won a James Beard Award, and Tom's Big Dinners. Tom and Jackie live in Seattle, Washington, with their daughter, Loretta.

A touching love story, I Love You Like Crazy Cakes will warm the cockles of any new parent's heart, especially those who have recently adopted a child. It's an ideal story for lap-time reading, and will inspire parents and kids to talk about their own first "meetings," whether at birth or in an adoption agency. Jane Dyer, illustrator of the bestselling Time for Bed by Mem Fox, Oh My Baby, Little One by Kathi Appelt, and many other marvelous picture books, uses a pastel palette of watercolors to capture the tender moments between the American mom and her rosy-cheeked Chinese baby. (Ages 3 to 6) --Emilie Coulter

From Publishers Weekly
Lewis's sweetly sentimental picture-book debut plays out like a love letter to her adopted Chinese daughter. As she recalls the events leading up to their first meeting ("I had been waiting for you my whole life")Athe letters to foreign officials, the baby picture she received, the flight to china with other excited soon-to-be parentsAand describes their joyous homecoming, she taps into a well of genuine emotion, not surprisingly, since her account is based on her own experience. Like Jamie Lee Curtis's Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born, the book offers abundant reassurances of love to adopted children, even if at times it seems more concerned with the feelings of the adult narrator than with those of the child ("How did someone make this perfect match a world away? Did the Chinese people have a special window to my soul?"). Dyer's (When Mama Comes Home Tonight) watercolors are almost meltingly tender. Whether depicting an airplane soaring against a star-spangled night sky, a round-cheeked child enthralled with a room full of toys or an embrace shared by the newly bonded mother and child, the clear, bright colors and clean lines of her portraits are immensely appealing. Ages 4-8. (Sept.)
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