After watching the last several seasons of Top Chef and Masterchef, there are two thins that are abundantly clear to me: one, being team captain is not an enviable position, and two, have at least two desserts memorized and practiced. It is in that spirit that I present today’s Food Porn Recipe. It’s “The Best Chocolate Sheet Cake. Ever.” and it comes from The Pioneer Woman. My wording may be a little different, but the credit is completely hers. The reason I decided to make this recipe was because it seemed simple and straightforward, but with a lot of room for play. It also required under an hour to mix, bake and assemble, which is great for nights when I’m invited over to some friends’ house to watch The Big Lebowski, and I have nothing to offer.
Here’s what you need:
2 c. flour (I used cake flour)
2 c. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 c. buttermilk
2 eggs (beaten)
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. vanilla
2 sticks of butter
4 Tbsps. cocoa
1 c. boiling water
Oven at 350°. 18″ x 13″ sheet cake pan at the ready. No need to grease it with two sticks of butter in the batter (which, indeed, makes it better).
Mix the first three ingredients together in a large bowl. Be sure that they are well incorporated so that when they get wet in a few steps you won’t have discreet piles of chocolately, salty flour and chocolately, salty sugar.
Easy enough, right?
Mix the next four ingredients in a small bowl. I don’t keep buttermilk around, so the typical substitution is to put 1/2 tsp. of vinegar into a 1/2 c. measuring cup, fill it the rest of the way up with milk, then let it sit for five minutes. This somehow makes buttermilk. Does anyone know if one kind of milk is better than another, say whole vs. 1%? Put this off to the side.
In a saucepan, melt the two sticks of butter over a medium flame. Scoop in the cocoa (be generous!) and stir. Pour in the boiling water then let the mixtures boil hard for 30 seconds.
Pour this over the flour mixture and stir until the liquid has been mostly absorbed. Make sure the mixture is mostly cool (it should be) because the next step is adding the egg mixture and you don’t want them too cook in the bowl.
Add the egg mixture and stir until just incorporated. I know the common wisdom for cakes and muffins is to not overmix the batter because of gluten over-production which will make the cake tough and full of air bubbles. However, since I used cake flour, which has less gluten, I wonder if there’s a bit more leeway into how many strokes I can use. Not hundreds more, of course. Not even as many as my Kitchen Aid might require, but maybe an additional 25 to 50 strokes. Does anyone know?
Pour into the sheet cake tray and bake for 20 minutes. My cake actually went for 27 minutes until a fork stuck in the center could be pulled out clean.
While the cake was baking, I turned my attention to my old nemesis, chocolate frosting, which has almost the same ingredients as the cake above:
1 3/4 sticks butter
4 Tbps. cocoa
6 Tbps. milk
1 tsp. vanilla
1 lb. (minus 1/2 c.) powdered sugar
Melt the butters. Add the cocoa. Stir. Add the milk and vanilla. Stir. Add the powdered sugar. Incorporate. Easy, right? Unless you’re me. I used the last of my powdered sugar -which I swear was a pound (minus 1/2 c.)!- and what I got instead of a fudgy chocolate frosting was a fudgy chocolate sauce. It was a delicious fudgy chocolate sauce, but not exactly what I had envisioned for my cake. Nevertheless, my time had run out, so I poured the sauce into a Tupperware bowl and took it with me to the movie-viewing.
The cake itself was well-received. It was moist with an almost brownie-like density around the edges with a more traditional cake crumb in the center. I’m guessing this was from the cake flour, but I’ll have to use AP the next time just to see what the difference is. I’m also interested to spice up the frosting with some cayenne pepper next time (but not so much that people won’t come back for thirds). If you try this recipe, let me know your results! and thank you, Pioneer Woman!
Discuss...
