Cupcakes! from the Cake Mix Doctor

Long before the cupcake craze was in full swing, I was baking cupcakes. A high school intern in Nashville helped me bake, decorate, and then deliver those cupcakes at the end of each testing day to St. Luke’s Community House in Nashville where they were placed on food trays for the senior mobile meals program. Many of those recipes made it into this book and run the gamut from kid-friendly, to dinner party ready, to holiday focused, to muffins, to even sculptures and table decorations you can create with cupcakes. Cupcakes are a celebration, a portion-controlled dessert all your own, so no matter your age, you will love the 135 recipes and beautiful photography in this book.

Most popular recipes: Key Lime Pie Cupcakes with meringue on top, Warm Chocolate Cupcakes with Molten Centers, Coconut Snowballs, Butterfly Cupcakes, the Best Birthday Cupcakes, and Cookie Dough Cupcakes.

Why I wrote this book: Peter Workman wanted me to write a children’s cookbook. I resisted at first, thinking children outgrow the often babylike tone of a kids’ book. And the Cake Mix Doctor was already enjoying a healthy audience of kid bakers who didn’t need a book aimed just for kids. What if the recipes were written in clearly adult language, but the book was beautiful and fun and would immediately appeal to children? Cupcakes! And truly, they appeal to the child in all of us.

Favorite cooking tip in the book: Use an ice cream scoop to scoop batter into cupcake pans. This is less messy than using a spoon, and it keeps the cupcakes uniform in size.