My name is Cathy Seiple and I was the lucky winner of the “Winner Bakes the Cake Sweepstakes” featured in PARADE magazine. As the winner, I chose to take my husband, Bob, with me to Nashville, Tennessee to meet Anne Byrn, the author of the Cake Mix Doctor cookbooks. As we had never been to Tennessee, we were excited about my win.

We arrived at The Viking Store located at The Factory in Franklin, TN on Saturday, July 17, and were warmly greeted by Anne and her assistant, Diane, at the Cooking Studio kitchen. We also met the ever charming Rebecca Carlisle, from the Workman Publishing publicity department.

After introductions were complete, we donned our aprons and got to work. Anne had chosen three yummy cake recipes: (1) a Cinnamon Breakfast Bundt Cake which we drizzled with a simple glaze; (2) a Lemon Lover’s Layer Cake with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting garnished with fresh blueberries and thin lemon slices; and (3) a Chocolate Chip Layer Cake covered with a Bittersweet Chocolate Ganache.

Over the years, I found that baking is a wonderful stress reliever for me. I have now learned that using cake mixes doctored with simple ingredients can be a quicker and less complicated way of achieving an attractive and rather tasty finished product. I was especially thrilled to pick up many simple garnishing ideas from Anne that will prove useful in my future baking projects. Anne is an easy person to work with so preparing and baking the recipes she chose was fun. Making the ganache was simple and I wondered why I had never attempted it before.

The highlight in the kitchen that afternoon was seeing Bob with an apron on, completing tasks that Anne asked him to help with, and enjoying himself. Of course, he could not wait to taste the finished products. He and I both favored the cinnamon cake which would be perfect at any time of day.

Meeting and baking with Anne, being able to benefit from her baking skills, combined with the camaraderie shared by all of us working in the kitchen that afternoon, proved to be a fun time and one that I will remember with fondness. So, a big THANK YOU to everyone involved. I feel fortunate to have won such a great prize.

The recipients of the lesson, Cathy and Robert Seiple, won it as part of a PARADE magazine sweepstakes. We spent the afternoon baking and eating three mouthwatering cakes with Anne and her assistant, Diane (both of whom, I might add, have the most beautiful southern accents that make every word uttered sound ever so much more pleasant and polite than lowly New York chatter).

After witnessing firsthand just how easy it is to make Anne’s cakes – with such delicious, made from scratch results – I will put it in writing that I am a complete convert to her method.

With Anne’s new gluten-free book coming out soon, I’m fervently hoping that Workman will need to send an emissary back to Nashville for further dessert-related assistance. And, once that day comes, perhaps this blog post will serve as a not-so-subtle suggestion that I am the woman for the job!

For more photos, visit the Cake Mix Doctor Facebook page.

Rebecca Carlisle is a senior publicist

–Cookbook Director Suzanne Rafer just won’t put the needles down.

My friends are always asking me for recipe advice. It’s not because I’m a brilliant cook, (I’m not) it’s because I have access to the latest Workman cookbooks and love to share the recipes!

But a recent recipe request had me stumped. My friend Anita had volunteered to bake cupcakes for her office’s Haiti earthquake relief bake sale fundraiser and asked for a recipe that would be unique enough to grab the attention of her officemates but simple enough to put together after work one night. I immediately thought of the adorable cupcakes in Anne Byrn’s Cupcakes! from the Cake Mix Doctor, but cringed at the thought of beautifully decorated icing on the bumpy New York City transit.

Luckily I was able to get advice Cake Mix Doctor herself, Anne Byrn! She immediately suggested the Bake Sale Caramel Cupcakes from her newest book, The Cake Mix Doctor Returns. Well, why didn’t I think of that? The caramel icing is cooked and it hardens slightly as it cools on the cupcake, keeping it from getting messy in transit, and the classic flavor is perfect for a bake sale.

Anita’s cupcakes were a huge hit at the bake sale, which raised over $2000 in just one lunch hour! Anne shared the recipe, as well as some other bake sale tips, over on her blog at CakeMixDoctor.com.

I went with the Fresh Orange Birthday Cake with Orange Cream Cheese Frosting. The freshly squeezed orange in the cake and zest in the icing had my kitchen smelling incredible before I even got the pans in the oven. The result was a decadent icing paired with a light and refreshing cake so good that we ended up eating a generous slice for Sunday brunch! One of my favorite things about the Cake Mix Doctor books is how easy it is to mix and match the cakes with different icings, and I’d love to try this one with a chocolate frosting or glaze with some orange zest sprinkled in, but I’ve got 159 cakes to get through before trying repeats!

Fresh Orange Birthday Cake

Vegetable oil spray, for misting the pans
Flour, for dusting the pans
1 large orange
About 1 cup orange juice from a carton
1 package (18.25 ounces) plain yellow cake mix
1 package (3.4 ounces) vanilla instant pudding mix
½ cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 large eggs
Orange Cream Cheese Frosting (recipe below)
12 to 15 fresh orange slices, or candy gum drop
orange slices, for garnish

1. Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly mist three 9-inch round cake pans with vegetable oil spray, then dust them with flour. Shake out the excess flour and set the pans aside.
2. Rinse the orange and pat it dry with paper towels. Grate enough zest to measure 2 to 3 teaspoons. Cut the orange in half and squeeze the juice into a small bowl; you will have about ½ cup of juice. Add enough orange juice from a carton to the fresh
orange juice to measure 1¹⁄³ cups.
3. Place the cake mix, pudding mix, oil, vanilla, eggs, and orange juice and orange zest in a large mixing bowl and beat with an electric mixer on low speed until the ingredients are moistened, 30 seconds. Stop the machine and scrape down the side of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat the batter until well combined and smooth, about 1½ minutes longer, scraping down the side of the bowl again if needed. Divide the cake batter evenly among the 3 prepared cake pans, about 1¾ cups of batter per pan, smoothing the tops with the rubber spatula. Place the cake pans in the oven. If your oven is not large enough to hold 3
pans on one rack, place 2 pans on that rack and one in the center of the rack above.
4. Bake the cake layers until the tops spring back when lightly pressed with a finger, 18 to 20 minutes. The cake layer on the higher rack may bake faster so test it for doneness first. Transfer the cake pans to wire racks and let the cake layers cool for 5 minutes. Run a long, sharp knife around the edge of each cake layer and give the pans a good shake to loosen the cakes. Invert each layer onto a wire rack, then invert it again onto another wire rack so that the cakes are right side up. Let the layers cool to room temperature, 15 minutes longer.

5. Make the Orange Cream Cheese Frosting.

6. To assemble the cake, transfer one layer, right side up, to a serving platter. Spread the top with frosting. Place the second layer of cake, right side up, on top of the first and frost the top. Repeat this process with the third layer. Use the remaining frosting
to frost the side of the cake, working with smooth, clean strokes. Arrange the fresh orange slices around the base of the cake, or place candy gum drop orange slices on top of the cake. To make slicing easier, place the uncovered cake in the refrigerator
until the frosting sets, 20 minutes.

Just Want a Two-Layer Cake? That’s easy. Pour the Fresh Orange Birthday Cake batter into two 9-inch round cake pans that have been misted and floured. You’ll need to fill them a little fuller than for a three-layer cake and they’ll take a little longer to be done; bake the layers until they are golden brown and spring back in the center when lightly pressed with a finger, 25 to 30 minutes. When you assemble the cake, spread the frosting between the two layers more thickly than for a three-layer cake.

Keep It Fresh! Store this cake, in a cake saver or loosely covered with waxed paper, in the refrigerator for up to one week. Freeze the cake, wrapped in aluminum foil, for up to six months. Let the cake thaw overnight in the refrigerator before serving.

Orange Cream Cheese Frosting

8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, at room temperature
4 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1 teaspoon grated orange zest (see Note)
2 to 3 teaspoons fresh orange juice
3¾ cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted

Place the butter and cream cheese in a medium-size bowl and beat with an electric mixer on low speed until combined, 30 seconds. Stop the machine. Add the orange zest, 2 teaspoons of the orange juice, and the confectioners’ sugar, a bit at a time, beating with the mixer on low speed until the confectioners’ sugar is well incorporated, 1 minute. Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat the frosting until fluffy, 1 minute longer. Add up to 1 teaspoon more orange juice if the frosting seems too stiff. Use the frosting at once.
Note: A small orange will yield a little more than 1 teaspoon of zest. And it will give you a tablespoon or two of juice, more than you need for this recipe.

For a full-color look at all of the cakes in the book and four recipes including Fresh Strawberry Cake and Orange Birthday Cake, click here or read the excerpt below.

Visit cakemixdoctor.com for Anne Byrn’s tour dates

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.