I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with cake mixes.

On one hand, I don’t remember ever seeing a Betty Crocker box in my grandmother’s kitchen. Likewise, I was raised in a home where “from scratch” was the only way to go when it was time to bake any cake, ranging from decorated birthday cakes to my mother’s famous multi-layer Butterfinger cake.

In the privacy of my own home, more than a few cakes have sprung from the red cardboard box. I’m always careful to add just enough extra ingredients to convince myself I’m not disgracing my family’s lineage of great bakers.

My shame subsided when I read an article about Anne Byrn, the author of The Cake Mix Doctor cookbooks.

A former food editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, she wrote an article for Nashville’s The Tennessean in 1998 on doctoring cake mixes. In the article, she asked the paper's readers to send in their suggestions. After receiving 500 responses within a week, she wrote her first '”The Cake Mix Doctor,” which has sold several million copies.

Byrn’s philosophy is, if you don't have the time - or patience - to bake from scratch, don’t despair. Use a mix, add other ingredients to spice it up and make a frosting from scratch while the cake’s baking.

I couldn’t believe somebody actually understood me and my approach to cake-baking! I was even more impressed when I read her philosophy on cake mixes:

“The thing about mixes is you can’t mess them up. They’ve been road-tested like the steel-belted tires on a car.” She also repeated two statistics that support my cause – cake mixes are used in more than 60 percent of American households, and about 300 million boxes are sold each year.

Feeling vindicated, I made the banana cake from her cookbook, but substituted cream cheese icing in place of the caramel she suggests. The cake emerged a deep golden color and the pale yellow icing with a hint of banana added the perfect light touch. Warm from the oven, it tasted like one of my grandmother’s creations.

Just the stamp of approval I needed to continue my love affair with cake mixes.

Go Bananas Cake

1 package (18 1/4 ounces) plain yellow cake mix

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon