Last year, before the holidays, I was contacted about reviewing The Cake Mix Doctor Bakes Gluten-Free and I said yes. A copy was sent to me, arriving on Christmas Eve.
The author, Anne Byrn, is the mastermind behind The Cake Mix Doctor series. It all started when she was baking for her children and, being a busy mother, didn’t always have time to bake from scratch and she would use cake mixes. This would eventually cumulate into a cookbook idea that used cake mixes as the basis for recipes. For this new cake mix book, the focus is gluten-free and it is a timely release as gluten-free cake mixes are increasingly becoming better in quality and more available.
I don’t ordinarily use cake mixes – mixes have never been a big thing with my family – and nowadays I make everything from scratch, but I still recognize the importance and convenience of cake mixes. Using gluten-free cake mixes also helps eliminates a lot of the thinking and guess-work for people who are new to gluten-free baking and helping ease the transition until they are confident enough to work with a variety of flours and perhaps eventually make their own recipes with ease.
Although a cake mix cookbook, this are recipes for more than just cake. There are recipes for cookies, bars and brownies, and muffins as well – all using cake mix! There is even a recipe for fruit crumble. Included for all the recipes are quantities that the recipe yield, prep, baking, and cooling times as well as a space in the sidebar for recipe reminders for any observations the baker may have made, including variations (“special touches”) not mentioned in the cookbook. Throughout the book dairy-free options are also suggested.
) Though most of the food was gluten-free and dairy-free, a few weren’t but do provide inspiration for me to make gluten-free/dairy-free versions.
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