The Cake Mix Doctor goes chocolate! Anne Byrn brings her proven prescription for doctoring cake mix to an ingredient that inspires love bordering on obsession. It's a marriage made in baker's heaven-150 all-new, all-easy recipes for cakes, starring the ingredient that surpasses all other flavors, including vanilla, by a 3-to-1 margin, and that Americans consume to the tune of 2.8 billion pounds a year. Starting with versatile supermarket cake mixes and adding just the right extras-including melted semisweet chocolate bars, chocolate chips, or cocoa powder, plus fresh eggs or a bit of buttermilk, dried coconut, mashed bananas, or instant coffee powder-a baker at any level of experience can turn out dark, rich, moist, delicious chocolate layer cakes, time and again. Not to mention sheet cakes, pound cakes, cupcakes and muffins, cheesecakes, cookies, brownies, and bars. Rounding out the book are 38 all-new homemade frostings and fillings, and a full-color insert showing every cake in the book. Anne Byrn is the author of the bestselling Cake Mix Doctor series and The Dinner Doctor, with over 3.5 million copies in print. She makes frequent appearances on Good Morning America and QVC. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with her family. Her website is www.cakemixdoctor.com. Ever-So-Moist Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Sour Cream Frosting SERVES: 16 PREPARATION TIME: 10 MINUTES BAKING TIME: 28 TO 32 MINUTES ASSEMBLY TIME: 10 MINUTES Solid vegetable shortening for greasing the pans Flour for dusting the pans 1 package (18.25 ounces) devil's food cake mix with pudding 1 cup sour cream 3/4 cup water 1/2 cup vegetable oil 3 large eggs 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract Chocolate Sour Cream Frosting (see below) 1. Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350ªF. Generously grease two 9-inch round cake pans with solid vegetable shortening, then dust with flour. Shake out the excess flour. Set the pans aside. 2. Place the cake mix, sour cream, water, oil, eggs, and vanilla in a large mixing bowl. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed for 1 minute. Stop the machine and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat 2 minutes more, scraping down the sides again if needed. The batter should look well combined. Divide the batter between the prepared pans, smoothing it out with the rubber spatula. Place the pans in the oven side by side. 3. Bake the cakes until they spring back when lightly pressed with your finger, 28 to 32 minutes. Remove the pans from the oven and place them on wire racks to cool for 10 minutes. Run a dinner knife around the edge of each layer and invert each onto a rack, then invert again onto another rack so that the cakes are right side up. Allow to cool completely, 30 minutes more. 4. Meanwhile, prepare the Chocolate Sour Cream Frosting. 5. Place one cake layer, right side up, on a serving platter. Spread the top with frosting. Place the second layer, right side up, on top of the first layer and frost the top and sides of the cake with clean, smooth strokes. - The Cake Mix Doctor says: If you are trying to cut calories and fat, substitute plain yogurt for the sour cream in the cake batter. But be forewarned that the sour cream produces a far moister cake than one with yogurt. Chocolate Sour Cream Frosting MAKES 3 CUPS, ENOUGH TO FROST A 2- OR 3-LAYER CAKE OR 30 CUPCAKES PREPARATION TIME: 10 MINUTES 8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, cut into 8 pieces 2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder 3 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted 1/3 cup sour cream 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract 1. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over low heat or melt it in a large glass bowl in the microwave oven on high power for 45 seconds. 2. Place the melt

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