Want to make a celebration special without breaking the bank? This cake expert has a handful of suggestions for sprucing up ...

Alexandra is an associate editor on CNET's Performance Optimization team. She graduated from Marymount Manhattan College in New York City, and interned with CNET's Tech and News teams while in school.

When I plucked the cookbook from a Little Free Library, I didn't know that I would find a cake with a story as good as any in the discarded novels stacked there. Flipping through the "Southern ...