Imagine a kitchen warm with the smells of sweet vanilla, fragrant cinnamon, and fresh butter. On the kitchen counter is a cooling rack piled high with fresh-from-the-oven delights filled with chocolate chips and crunchy pecans. Ah, the age-old comfort of cookies.

Next imagine that each of the yummy treats began with a convenient box of cake mix. That's right, a standard 18.25-ounce box of cake mix is the secret to some of the tastiest, simplest, and most irresistible cookies imaginable. With a few extra ingredients, turns of a spoon, and whirrs of a mixer, cake mix can make anyone a prize cookie baker.

Like Cookie Dough Delights and Brownie Mix Bliss, Cake Mix Cookies is the first cookbook of its kind.

Cake Mix Cookies is filled with an array of more than 175 drop, shaped, filled, and bar cookie options for every occasion. Numerous all-American favorites are used as starting points:

• Chocolate chip
• Oatmeal raisin
• Jam thumbprints
• Dark chocolate brownies

There are new takes on classic European cookies:

• Crunchy Italian biscotti
• Tender French madeleines
• rich Viennese teacakes

And a healthy dose of new cookies created for this book:

• Blackberry-lemon buttermilk bars
• Triple chocolate chess squares
• Chocolate blackout

Cake Mix Cookies contains the broadest range of new recipes for cookies and bars that is unavailable elsewhere. And while it capitalizes on the popularity of baking with cake mixes, it has its own unique niche on the home cook's shelf.

About the Author

Camilla V Saulsbury

Camilla V. Saulsbury is a food writer, food scholar, and recipe developer. She has won numerous national recipe contests, including the grand prize at the National Chicken Cooking Contest and the 2006 Build-a-Better-Burger recipe contest. Her recipes have appeared in Southern Living, Better Homes and Gardens, Vegetarian Times, Cooking Light, Sunset, and other cooking magazines. She lives in Texas.