Texas Sheet Cake & Frosting

Fellow Texans proudly say: "Everything's bigger in Texas!"  Here is some Texas Sheet Cake actually made in Texas.  Wow!  ;)

We've been making Texas Sheet Cake for many years.  It is a simple chocolate cake baked in a large sheet pan--I use a cookie sheet with sides that's about 12" x 17".


Texas Sheet Cake
2 cups sugar
2 cups flour
½ tsp. salt
1 cup butter or margarine
1 cup water
4 Tb. cocoa
½ cup sour cream or buttermilk
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. cinnamon, optional
1 tsp. vanilla, optional

Mix together flour, sugar, salt. In a pan bring to boil cocoa, water and butter. Add dry ingredients and stir. Add and blend well sour cream, eggs, and soda. Bake at 375° for 20 to 25 minutes. Frost with Texas Sheet Cake frosting while still hot.

Texas Sheet Cake Frosting
1 cup butter or margarine
¼ cup milk
4 Tb. cocoa
1 cup nuts, coarsely chopped, optional
4 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla

Boil butter, milk, and cocoa until bubbly. Add remaining ingredients to the pan and stir until smooth. Pour over hot cake and spread. Can make half of the frosting recipe if you want a thinner frosting, or use the same proportions with only ½ cup butter.

Tiffany's Notes: My memory of this sheet cake is helping mom make 5 of them for her to take to A Camp one summer (a few days of camping and hiking and rappelling for the 15-year-old young women at church).  She and another lady were in charge of the food for camp. 

Texas Sheet Cake is easy to make and one cake serves between 20-30 people.  (Serving only 20 would be with very large pieces!) I especially like that you don't have to wait for the cake to cool to frost it.  Texas sheet cake also travels well. 

I usually stir in the cake dry ingredients with a wire wisk--or you can use a hand mixer.  A wire wisk works fine.  When making the frosting I've found a hand mixer works really well--it gets out any powdered sugar lumps much easier. 

I always make the full frosting recipe--I remember it used to run over the edges of the pan, but I've never had that problem lately.  This time around I did decrease the butter/margarine to 3/4 cup and it worked fine.  I usually make it without nuts (thanks to non-nut loving folks around here) but it's great with nuts in the frosting.

Comments

  1. The thing I love about Texas Sheet Cake is that it has a better frosting to cake ratio. Regular cakes--and cupcakes--are always too tall and I feel like I have to eat the bottom half off first so the proportion is better. Have you ever frozen part of a Texas Sheet Cake. I would love to make one, but I don't like the idea of being home alone with two napping children and 30 pieces of awesome cake.

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  2. I like Texas Sheet Cake for breakfast with a glass of cold milk.

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  3. Oh, yes! It freezes beautifully. I actually did that with this cake. We ate some and then I cut the rest of the cake up and wrapped the pieces in plastic wrap. Then, they were put in the freezer to use on other days. The kids took them in their lunches and each day I got a couple of pieces out for the lunching-at-home folks. The pieces defrost in an hour or two. (The frosting doesn't stick to the plastic wrap.) You can also cut it up and put it in plastic containers in the fridge--layered with wax paper between layers.

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