Texas Sheet Cake

This, my friends, is a family recipe. From the cookbook, Our Family Cookbook, which my mom made for me as an anniversary gift. (Talk about a great gift! It's filled with recipes from both my family and John's family, and is so meaningful and sentimental.) So, unless you happened to get an addition of this (umm, I doubt it), then here is where to get this recipe.

So after John took a bite he said, "I'm eating homemade chocolate, right?" And he was completely serious. I started telling him the ingredients in this recipe and he said, "so basically this is homemade chocolate." I asked if I should put it on the blog and he said, "You better!!"

This is such an easy dessert but great because it feeds so many (the "sheet" in Texas Sheet Cake is there for a reason!). It feeds a ton but it is quite easy, and, um, delicious. Should I go make another sheet right now? Hmmm...

Ingredients:

Cake:
*2 cups sugar
*1 cup white whole wheat flour
*1 cup white flour (or two cups if no white whole wheat flour)
*1 teaspoon baking soda
*1 teaspoon cinnamon
*1 teaspoon cloves
*1 teaspoon ginger
*2 sticks unsalted butter
*4 tablespoons cocoa powder
*2 eggs
*1 teaspoon vanilla
*1/2 cup skim milk

Icing:
*1 stick unsalted butter
*4 tablespoons cocoa powder
*6 tablespoons skim milk
*1/2 (32 oz) bag powdered sugar (more or less depending on your sweet tooth)

Preparation:

Cake:
*Preheat to 400 degrees.

*In a large bowl, combine sugar, flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves and ginger.

*Boil water, butter and cocoa powder.

*Pour boiling ingredients over dry ingredients, while hot.

*Beat well, with electric mixer, and add vanilla, eggs and milk. g

*Batter will be thing. Pour into greased and floured (or flour/baking "Pam" spray) cookie sheet (I used a 9x13 pan/sheet).

*Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes.

Icing:
*Boil butter, cocoa and milk.

*Then, add powdered sugar and stir until smooth.

*Pour over cake while hot.

boiling cake ingredients

all mixed up!

batter poured into sheet

melting/boiling ingredients for icing

add powdered sugar (try not to make a mess like I did :) )

icing poured on top of sheet cake

look, twins!

I may or may not have had 5 pieces of this in one night...oh thank goodness for leggings.