Recipe: Valentine's Day white Texas sheet cake
When I think of Valentine’s Day desserts, I think of red velvet cake or maybe frosted sugar cookies.
I definitely don’t think of Texas sheet cake. But this almond-flavored white Texas sheet cake is a surprising — and delicious — option for your Valentine’s Day celebration. And with a whopping three sticks of butter included in the recipe (and a healthy amount of sour cream), it’s about as decadent a dessert you can bake.
This cake reminds me of a glazed donut or a honey bun, and it’s fantastic. It’s soft, buttery and fluffy with a slight hint of almond, and the sticky glaze added the perfect amount of sweetness. Aside from Valentine’s Day, this also would be a great dessert for a wedding shower or baby shower. Or Easter. Or Mother’s Day.
The basic idea behind this cake is to make a boiling butter and water solution that gets poured into the dry ingredients, much like making a chocolate cake. The batter comes together quickly, and 18 minutes in the oven was all my cake needed.
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The first half of the recipe was simple, but as I read the directions about how to glaze the cake, I was skeptical. To make the glaze, you boil milk and butter, so the mixture is hot. Putting warm glaze on a still-warm cake sounded like a recipe for disaster. But my job is to trust the recipe and follow it as closely as possible, so I poured my glaze on my cake and hoped for the best.
It made a colossal mess. The glaze melted and ran right off the cake into the sheet pan, but since the cake took up the entire pan, the glaze ran off the edges and onto my stove.
In an attempt to salvage the situation, I cut my cake into squares, put the squares on a baking rack over a baking sheet and poured the rest of the glaze that way, so it had somewhere to drip.
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It looked fine in the end, but I went about it in probably the most difficult way. Obviously, I would recommend letting the cake cool completely before spreading the warm glaze. Or you could use a festive cookie cutter to cut individually sized small cakes out of the larger cake and then glaze them over a larger plate or baking sheet.
If you’re going to try to keep the cake in one piece but remove it from the pan before glazing, I suggest using a silicone mat or parchment paper. Despite the spray I used, the cake wanted to split in half when I tried taking it out.
RECIPE
Ingredients:
Cake:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup unsalted butter
1 cup water
2 eggs
2/3 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon almond extract
Frosting:
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup whole milk
5 cups confectioners’ sugar
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
Chopped walnuts or sprinkles to garnish
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Directions:
1. Begin by preheating your oven to 375º F. Spray a 15-by-10-by-1-inch sheet pan with baking spray. Set aside.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda.
3. Then in a small saucepan, add the butter and water. Bring to a boil, and quickly remove from heat. Stir the hot liquid into the flour mixture.
4. In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs, sour cream and almond extract until smooth. Pour that into the flour mixture, and stir until smooth.
5. Spread the batter in the prepared sheet pan. Bake 18 to 22 minutes until the cake is just golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack for about 15 minutes.
6. While the cake cools, prepare the frosting by combining the butter and milk in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil.
7. Remove from the heat, and gradually stir in the confectioners’ sugar, almond extract and salt. Spread the glaze over the warm cake, and immediately top with sprinkles.
SOURCE: InspiredByCharm.com
This article originally appeared on The Repository: Recipe for Valentine's Day white Texas sheet cake
