Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

Cookbook Review: The Cake Mix Doctor Bakes Gluten-Free

If you do any gluten-free baking, you're fully aware that baking without regular flour requires some skill and patience in the kitchen. Thankfully, with gluten-free baking mixes , it's easy to make your favorite cookie and cake recipes without ripping your hair out in the process. Anne Byrn — aka "The Cake Mix Doctor" — is at it again with her latest cookbook, The Cake Mix Doctor Bakes Gluten-Free ($9), utilizing gluten-free baking mixes in all of her recipes. Always a sucker for gluten-free recipe books, I decided to see if Anne's reputation carried over into gluten-free recipes as well.

Here's what I thought about the book.

The first thing that surprised me about this book was the fact that gluten-free baking mixes are used in her delicious recipes for chocolate banana cake, orange layer cake, lemon chiffon cake, blueberry muffin cake, pumpkin spice cake, peanut butter brownies, wedding cakes, and more. You'll also learn how to make fancy frostings like strawberry cream cheese frosting, white chocolate cream cheese frosting, fluffy marshmallow frosting, and caramel glaze.

So if you want to bake a gluten-free dessert from scratch, this probably isn't the baking book for you, but from my experience, the mixes make it much easier. For instance, Anne will use yellow g-free cake mix for toasted coconut pound cake or pumpkin raisin muffins, g-free brownie mix for her marbled cream cheese brownies, and chocolate g-free cake mix for chocolate chip amaretto cake. But she does encourages you to get creative, to not follow the box's instructions (love this!), and she provides you with scrumptious substitutions throughout the book: use yogurt instead of sour cream, or orange juice instead of water or milk. If you're a first time gluten-free baker, you'll appreciate Anne's easy step-by-step approach, and you'll also learn lots of neat tips about gluten and gluten-free baking in general.

What really helped me out in the book were all the useful baking how-tos like how to tell when a bundt cake is done, and probably the most useful feature — "10 Steps to Sensational Gluten-Free Cakes." Every time you make one of the Cake Mix Doctor's recipes, there is an area beside the recipe to make notes for next time. And if you're lactose-intolerant, Anne also includes dairy-free substitutes whenever possible.

carrot cupcakes + white chocolate-cream cheese frosting ...

Carrot cake, I’ve learned, is a love-it-or-hate-it type of dessert.

Personally, I can’t understand what there is to hate about carrot cake. I suppose it has something to do with the idea of vegetables sneaking into one’s dessert.

I can think of someone who would never be appalled to find carrots in cake form: that’s right, the Easter bunny! Listen – I know I don’t have kids yet, but Easter is still one of my favorite holidays, and I absolutely love the idea of making a carrot cake for the Easter bunny. It’s like baking cookies for Santa. It’s fun. It’s festive. And kids or no kids, it’s sure to put you in the holiday spirit.

I don’t like any raisins or nuts or canned pineapple in my carrot cake – I prefer it to be pure and simple. I went with Deb’s recipe on Smitten Kitchen after going back and forth with Alton Brown’s recipe, as I was worried that Alton’s would come out too dense for cupcakes. I may try it in the future for a layer cake.

One of the common themes or suggestions I discovered while reading various recipes is that the more finer the grate you get on the carrots, the lighter the cake batter is going to be. Now, the easiest way to grate carrots is using the food processor, but it also produces a pretty thick grate. Using a box grater is better, and using a Microplane zester is ideal. I won’t lie to you – it’s also a big pain in the booty. Deb’s recipe calls for three cups, and I had one 16-ounce bag of carrots. By the time I peeled them, and grated them down to the heads and tossed those (careful because you don’t want to grate your fingers as I often do!), I had about three cups. Listen – the way I see it, just tighten that core, and get a mini-workout in as you grate. It’s a good arm workout. You may even break a sweat.

As for the frosting, cream cheese is the obvious choice for carrot cake or cupcakes. Here, we just kicked it up a notch by adding my latest favorite secret ingredient: white chocolate. It adds another level of richness and sweetness that you just can’t get from powdered sugar alone.

If you love carrot cake, you must try this recipe. And if you think you don’t like carrot cake, I triple-dog-dare you to try this recipe. These cupcakes are so moist, so perfect – you won’t even believe vegetables are capable of producing such lushness.

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