Simple Chocolate Sheet Cake

Cake recipes usually scare me.  Give me a cookie recipe and I’ll make an awesome batch that’s gone before the oven has cooled.  But cake, eh, not so much.

So I must have been slightly crazy when I decided to make an entire sheet of cake to take for an iftar, Ramadan dinner, this past Ramadan.  Real crazy because I would be making it for the first time just hours before dinner.  It’s usually not a good idea to attempt a new recipe just before any kind of event you plan on serving the dish at.  But we’ve already confirmed that Crazy and I go hand in hand sometimes.

I read through the entire recipe to make sure I had all the ingredients and understood the steps.  The ingredients were all on hand (I always have buttermilk in the fridge since these pancakes) and the steps seemed like something I could handle without breaking a sweat.

Everything came together nicely and my knees nearly buckled at the site of an entire sheet of chocolate cake covered with an incredible amount of chocolate frosting.  Being Ramadan, and the fact that the cake wasn’t for us, I had to wait until after dinner to get a taste.

Oh chocolate sheet cake how you impressed me.  The cake was so moist, chocolaty, and delicious.  I totally loved it.  And the fact that I came home with an empty sheet pan means everyone else did too.  I ended up making it two or three more times during Ramadan and made two sheets for J’s Eid party at her school.  Do I know how to wear out a recipe or what?

Chocolate Sheet Cake  {via The Pioneer Woman}

Ingredients

For The Cake:

• 2 cups flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 4 tablespoons (heaping) cocoa
• 2 sticks butter
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 2 whole beaten eggs
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

For Frosting:

• 1/2 cup finely chopped nuts
• 1 stick butter
• 4 tablespoons (heaping) cocoa
• 6 tablespoons milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 4 cups powdered sugar

Directions:

In a mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, and salt.