A New Take on Cake: 175 Beautiful, Doable Cake Mix Recipes for Bundts, Layers, Slabs, Loaves, Cookies, and More!

“It is what you do with a cake mix that makes a great cake,” Byrn (American Cake; The Cake Mix Doctor) writes in the introduction to this new volume of shortcut cake recipes, which are previewed in a section of photographs at the beginning of the book. The author covers all kinds of cakes—plus muffins, cookies and cupcakes—and how to successfully recreate each one with store-bought cake mix. Baking tools are also discussed (pans, cake stands, wire racks). Byrn gives tips on prepping cake pans, heating an oven, cooling baked cakes, and frosting (the latter is illustrated with step-by-step photographs of frosting techniques). Byrn’s scrumptious cake recipes include a confetti cake, DIY wedding cake, chocolate Nutella loaf, sour cream coffee cake, and champagne cake. There are many ideas here, with varying levels of elaborateness, but the use of store-bought cake mix simplifies things for busy home bakers. There are also sugar-free, gluten-free, vegan, and high-altitude options.