Sneak peek: The Cake Mix Doctor Returns! photo shoot

It’s the return of The Cake Mix Doctor, and Anne Byrn’s latest book is full of brand new recipes that turn ordinary cake mix into unique, delicious treats. Below, Anne shares some snapshots from the photo shoot for the book.

Workman Art Director Lisa Hollander, photo stylist Susan Sugarman, and her assistant work out details before shooting begins on the 163 cake photos in The Cake Mix Doctor Returns!

A huge slice of the Smith Island Cake waits to have its photo made. You cannot imagine the temptation present in this New York loft studio where cakes were frosted, sliced, photographed, then sampled, for five delicious days.

You can see from the fuzziness of this photo why I am a food writer, not food photographer. This darling Blueberry Muffin Crumble Cake, is one of my favorites in the new book. And I promise it will look a lot better in the book than in this photo.

A sumptuous Chocolate Chip Layer Cake with Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting rests on the cake stand. There’s a funny thing about photography sessions. Once you’ve seen one cake, you’ve seen them all. I love this cake and yet the food stylists and art director aren’t thinking about how gorgeous this cake looks on that stand. They’re thinking the next cake and the next…

A whole lotta shopping went into this food shoot. And a whole lotta baking ahead of time. Since Ben Fink, the photographer, center, is a busy guy, the baking took place in the weeks ahead of the shoot. Cake layers were wrapped, labeled, and tucked into giant rented freezers. Days before the shoot, the layers thawed and the frostings were made.

Just as people have their best side, so cakes look better from one angle versus another. We tried to make the photo spread realistic but also interesting to the eye. So not all sheet cakes were cut into squares. Some photos were of the entire long cake because it looked best that way.

I’ve said all along I am not a cake decorator, so it was really humbling to be working with Susan Sugarman and having to hold that pastry bag correctly! Fortunately we both worked on the wedding cake. Susan shared a trick – she frosted the wedding cake with my cream cheese frosting but used the canned vanilla frosting for piping on details.

Practice makes perfect, right?

Edible pearl dragees were carefully placed, with a surgeon’s care, between each dot of frosting around the base of the wedding cake layers.

We dashed to Whole Foods at 6 p.m. to buy the blue hydrangeas, then the finished wedding cake went before the camera. Within minutes, our coats were on, lights were turned off, and everyone called it a day. When I saw this photo later it seemed sad because the wedding cake was all dressed up with no place to go except in the photo spread in my new cookbook…

Anne Byrn is known to millions of fans through her Cake Mix Doctor and Dinner Doctor cookbooks. Anne lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband and three children.