Anne Byrn - Chocolate from the Cake Mix Doctor

Pros: Delicious, diverse, easy recipes.
Cons: If you use this book too often, you are likely to gain weight.

I’ve been wanting to review Chocolate from the Cake Mix Doctor by Anne Byrn for months. First pregnancy made it hard for me to get any writing (much less baking or eating) accomplished, and then in June I fell and broke my wrist and...

Pros: Easy directions, most ingredients are common, choices to suit any tastes
Cons: A couple of recipes include frozen coconut which is hard to find.

This is a wonderful cookbook. The few few pages show colour photographs of each recipe in the book. The cakes are not decorated in ways too fancy for the home baker. I picked many of the recipes I tried by looking at the pictures.

There is a lot of variety in this book: layer cakes, sheet cakes, muffins, brownies, even a few cookies. It's all good. The recipes included for frostings can be easily mix and matched, especially since they are listed in their own section at the back. It isn't limited to milk chocolate; there are a few including white chocolate.

The method advocated is simple: dump all the ingredients together and mix. Anyone will have success with this book and look like a experienced baker to the unknowing taster!