An Evening With Anne Byrn | The Durham Hotel, Durham | Monday, Oct. 14, 6 p.m.
Anne Byrn, the cookbook author who gained national prominence in the early 2000s for teaching people how to gussy up boxes of Betty Crocker with add-ins like sour cream and Sherry, still embraces her “Cake Mix Doctor” moniker.
But Byrn’s more recent cookbooks have seen her take less of an advisory role and more of a narrative, archival one. Out this month, her latest book, Baking in the American South: 200 Recipes and Their Untold Stories , only includes three of her own family’s recipes. The rest are sourced from department stores, school cafeterias, mills, and churches across the South; drawn from people like “country ham king Allan Benton” and 1930s-era boardinghouse owner Ma Hoyle…