Pinterest Project: The Best Texas Sheet Cake

Cake before icing set

Welcome to the best texas sheet cake.  I found this post through Pinterest and decided to try it because her pictures just looked so yummy!  Upon reading the post and further investigation I realized that this cake recipe is the same that has become quite famous by The Pioneer Woman, and is a recipe that has been around for a VERY long time!

Now, I know you are probably looking at my picture and thinking, "really?"

I am planning on having a lot of fun with the "Pin-tastic" posts on this blog.  I fully expect some attempts at a Pinterest project to be utter failures, some to be completely awesome, and some to be middle of the road, take it or leave it, eh? kind of projects.

Where does this cake fall?  I would say middle of the road, but NOT because of taste, and probably because this is my first time making it.

The taste is amazing and I can totally see why it's been around for ages.  The problem I had was with the icing not hardening the way it seemed like it was supposed to.  A very thin, top layer did harden a teeny bit, but whenever I cut into it, the icing was still runny.  I didn't try putting it in the fridge since it was so big I didn't have room in my fridge to do that.  So maybe that would have helped, I don't know.

Regardless, it did prove to be the best texas sheet cake ever, in spite of my inadequate skill.

Enough talk.

More bake.

First, in a large mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, and salt.

Sometimes if I just want to whisk something real quick I grab my Kitchen Aid whisk from where I keep it in my Kitchen Aid bowl, locked into my Kitchen Aid mixer on the counter.  So much quicker than just opening the drawer that is literally right in front of me and pulling out my hand whisk.  Ain't nobody got time for that!

Next, melt butter in a saucepan and add the cocoa.  Stir together.

Boil 1 cup of water.

Add the boiling water to the melted butter and cocoa.

Allow mixture to boil for 30 seconds, then turn off heat.

Pour over flour mixture.  Be careful you don't step on the baby going from the stove to the countertop.  Very important business going on in that tupperware cupboard!

Stir lightly to cool.

In a measuring cup, pour buttermilk, and add beaten eggs, baking soda, and vanilla.

If you are like me, you NEVER have buttermilk when a recipe calls for it.

Here is a good substitute:

Put 1/2 Tablespoon of white vinegar (or lemon juice) into a liquid measuring cup.

Add enough regular milk to bring it up to the 1/2 cup line.

Let stand for 5 minutes, then use in recipe.

Next we need to beat some eggs.  After using the last two eggs from the carton, set the carton aside to use in a future home school activity.  That is, if you use the last two eggs.  And if you home school.

Beat the eggs.

Pour the beaten eggs into the buttermilk.

Add the baking soda.

Add the vanilla.  Raise your hand if you always put just a tad more vanilla in then you're supposed to.  I do every time.  It smells so good, I just can't help myself!

Pour the buttermilk mixture into the butter/chocolate mixture.

Stir until it is well blended.

Pour into a 13" by 18" sheet cake pan and bake at 350* for 20 minutes.

Let's take a few seconds to look at this next picture and revel in the smooth-ness of it.  Because this is as good as this cake is ever going to look (due, I believe, to my amazing baking skills.)

While the cake is baking, make the icing.

If ruining the cake adding delicious nuts, chop them up finely.

Melt butter in a saucepan.

Add the cocoa.

Stir, stir, stir.... then turn off heat.

Add the milk.

Add the vanilla......then add a little more.  ;)

Add the powdered sugar.

Stir together.

Here is where you would add the nuts and then stir together.

Pour over the warm cake.  Apparently I did not heat the chocolate long enough to get rid of the lumps.

Clearly.

But had I done that, it would have been perfect!  So go ahead and make your own delicious sheet cake, and don't do what I did!

How To Make A Baby Block Cake

Tutorials are great.  Good tutorials, that is.  If you are a hands on learner, tutorials with lots of pictures are the best kind.  I love tutorials that are picture heavy.  I get a much better sense of how something is supposed to be done if I can see a picture to go along with the text.

While I like a good tutorial, I don't think I am very good at making tutorials (how many times can I possibly say "tutorial" in this post?)  My problem is, I start out good, taking a picture with every step.  Then I get into it.  I get completely wrapped up in whatever it is that I'm doing, that before I know it I've gone 2-3 steps without taking a single picture.  Hopefully I will get better at this, as I hope to do plenty more tutorials in the future, but for now, please bear with me, and if you have any questions at all about something that I have completely confused or have done a terrible job at explaining, by all means, contact me!

So here we go.  A baby block cake.  Isn't it cute?  I was particularly proud of this cake.  It's not extravagant, yet it is pretty, pink, and adorable.

First step?  Bake your cakes!  I used a 6"x6"x2" square pan.  My cakes raised quite a bit in the middle, so by the time I cut them flat they were still a good 2" high.  So my cake was roughly a 6" cube.

Once they have cooled, I like to pop my cakes in the freezer for a couple hours, sometimes all day or overnight.  This makes it very easy when I pull them out and take a knife to'em.  Sometimes I don't even bother taking them out of the pan.  Just wrap it up, pan and all, and stick it in the freezer.  I had to take them out this time because I only have two pans and needed one to bake the third layer.

Next step is to cut the rounded tops off the cakes.  Make sure it is completely flat so that when you stack it, it doesn't look like the leaning tower of poorly constructed cakes.  Then eat the extra with selfless abandon discard the extra cake.

If you think ahead, unlike me, you will cover your cake board with foil before you pull your cakes out of the freezer (or after you've cut them).  I realized as I started covering my circle that my cakes were thawing and would be harder to cut so I popped them back in the freezer while I finished covering my board.

Once your board is covered and your cakes are cut flat, it's time to stack!  Oh, and if you plan on, or are already even remotely into decorating cakes, a turntable is a MUST!  I absolutely love mine!  Makes piping so much easier and seamless.  

And now this is where my picture of all the layers stacked together is supposed to be.  When I was editing these pictures, it just disappeared from Picassa.  Completely disappeared.  There is a blank spot where it used to be, and I can't find it anywhere.  Any Picassa experts out there feel free to enlighten me on that one....  

So that brings me to the next picture.  The crumb coat.  The crumb coat is a thin layer of icing that you put on your cake to harden all the crumbs into place.  This way when you go back to ice your cake you don't have those pesky crumbs showing up where they don't belong, messing up your beautiful, decorative masterpiece.  

Once you've done this, now you wait for the icing to crust.  That just means harden up.  You can do this by just letting it sit on the counter, or if you prefer to quicken the process you can put it in the fridge for a bit.  The icing you use will determine how long you have to wait.  Some icings will crust easier/quicker than others.

Once your crumb coat is nice and set, it's time to really ice the cake!  I always start with the top.  Get a very generous amount on there.  Don't worry about getting too much icing on the cake.  A lot will come off as you are smoothing.  And is there such a thing as too much icing, really?

Once you've got the top slathered on move on to the sides.  Get a good, big glop on there and then just carefully move it around.

Continue until all the sides and top are generously covered.

Now it's time to smooth!  This is one of my favorite steps!  Start by just using your spatula and start with the sides.  Just get it as smooth as you can.  Then once you've smoothed all the sides, move to the top.  This is where more pictures would have come in very useful, however, I really got into it at this point and forgot about my camera.  My apologies.

After you've smoothed out the whole cake as best you can, the next step is to get it even smoother!  There are a couple different methods out there for this.  I really like the hot spatula method.  Place a clean, dry towel next to the sink, with your cake next to that.  Turn on the hot water in the sink, and get it as scalding hot as it will go.  Run your spatula under the water for several seconds, then pull it out, swipe it on the towel to dry it, then just like you did when you were first smoothing it out, run your spatula along the side of the cake.  The heat from the spatula will smooth out the icing, just like butter!  It's awesome.  I love it.  Here is my finished product after smoothing it with the hot spatula.  It's not perfect, I still need to practice more, but I'm getting there. 

Time to decorate!  Out of the whole process, this is my favorite.  If I could have someone just bake and ice cakes for me and then hand them over when they are ready for the decorating and piping part, I would be a happy camper.  I like the baking part too, but I just REALLY like the decorating part!  

Okay, so once you've colored your icing the desired color, you are ready to go!

Fill your piping bag with icing.

Using star tip #21, I put a star border all around the top.  

Then I moved on to the sides and did a border around each side.

On the sides, I wrote "1", "B", "2", and "A".  This was a little tricky because I wanted it to be flat against the cake and not raised like it would be if just used a writing tip.  So I used the Wilton tip #104, and drew it on.  It wasn't very smooth though so I had to figure out a way to smooth it out.  All of my spatulas were too big (I need to get a smaller one!)  I happened to have a second #104 tip, so I put that on the tip of my finger, got it really hot under the water, dried it off, and used it to smooth out the icing on the letters and numbers.  It worked pretty good!

The finishing touch was the writing on the top.  I used Wilton tip #3.  First, I piped it onto some wax paper.  That way I was able to see how big to make the letters and where to put them in proportion to each other so that they were center on the cake.  The dots were kind of an after thought.  I knew it needed something more but didn't want it to be anything that would overshadow the writing.  

And that's it!  Have you ever made a baby block cake?  Please share, I would love to see it!

a candyland party success

Well the big Candyland party that we have been brain storming for, planning and anticipating is finally over!  And we've got one very happy and content 4 year old in its wake.  We have a lot of family and friends who live halfway across the country and could not be here, so this post is essentially for them, while also passing on some of the great ideas I came across in blog land for anyone looking to throw their own Candyland extravaganza!

Let's start at the very beginning - invitations!  I knew I wanted to make my own, but ideas out of the blue is not my strong suit.  I usually do pretty good at recreating someone else's ingenuity, however.  The problem is, I forgot to take pictures of the ones I made, and I didn't make any extras.  So I will have to settle for the original from which I got the idea in the first place: Gumball Invitations These invitations look much better than mine, but I was pleased with how they turned out anyway.

 


My vision for the outside came to life.  It really did.  It was exactly the way I wanted it to look.  I had another peppermint lollipop at the end of the driveway too.  Then the balloons at the end of the driveway shrunk.  And a few posterboards blew away, and the sign would not stay in it's place for anything.  I'm so glad Josh got a picture of it before it fell apart.  At least we know what it looked like, even if our guests only saw one or two squares!  :)

The peppermint lollys were fun to do.  This idea was all over the internet.  The one I referenced is HERE.  I made it with paper plates, craft paint, cellophane, thread and a wooden dowel.  I was a little hesitant on the peppermint design at first but once I got going it was pretty easy.  I painted the outside of two plates and then used hot glue to stick them together.  I bought a roll of cellophane at Target and the wooden dowels I swiped from the kids' windmills (sshhh! ;)  Then I just tied the balloons on with some ribbon.

We almost lost this puppy.  At just a few minutes before the party was supposed to start, we realized the white part had come off and blew away.  Josh found it on the neighbor's tree.  Several pieces of packing tape later we were back in business.  

 


The Birthday Wreath!  I think I am probably most proud of how this turned out.  I originally made some candy in different colored fabric because I was using what I had.  But then I went to JoAnn's and found this purple and pink fabric in the remnant section and picked it up.  I'm so glad I did because it looks so much better!  The candy idea came from this blog post at Small Fry & Co. For sake of time, I switched it up a little.  I cut my wreath circle out of cereal box cardboard, and painted it red so it wouldn't stand out against the red door as much.  I cut up toilet paper rolls and stuffed them with polyfill.  I cut the fabric into rectangles and sewed up the long side making a cylinder shape.  I stuffed it all in there, twisted up the sides and tied it with white thread!  It was really pretty easy.  I do think I would have liked it better with the cellophane like this blogger did originally, but I just didn't have much time.  I really like how this turned out though!  Oh, and I got the idea to put the 4 in there from a picture on Pinterest, but it was an Etsy listing and no longer exists so I couldn't link to the original post.  I just cut it out of the cereal box cardboard, painted it white and then painted different color dots all over.  I love it!

This paper plate candy was pretty easy, yet a little time consuming.  Sadly, it's the only one I made.  I wanted more, but just didn't have the time to make them.  

Candy on the walls and lollipops on the mantle.  The lollipop sticks were supposed to be painted white but again...ran out of time!  I blame it on moving two weeks before the party.  Link for lollipops.  I don't have a link for the balloon candy.  I found it on Pinterest and my computer won't take me to the site due to a suspicious link.  Weird, but you really don't need instructions.  Just wrap a balloon in cellophane!  I tied it with white thread so you couldn't see it.  

I lied.  I said the wreath was my favorite, but I think this garland is my favorite.  I didn't really have any instructions for this because the link I found was to an Etsy site where someone was selling it.  But it didn't look too hard to me so I gave it a whirl.  I did it a little different in that I left about 4 inches of space between circles rather than sewing them right next to each other.  I think I like it better because you can see into the next room very easily and it gives such a nice "pop" to the decor.

The sugary treats display!  I put some boxes under the table cloth to make it a little different.  Now that I'm looking at the picture I would have arranged it a little differently but at this point in the set up I was feverishly piping and decorating the cake while quickly spouting off to Josh where I wanted everything.  More on the cake later - whew!

I thought these marshmallow pops were a perfect addition, and being a bargain shopper I was excited to find them at the dollar store.  Daisy tasted one yesterday and said it was yucky!  Oh well.  At least they looked good.  :)  I stood them up in a goblet-full of marshmallow ice cream cones.

Having the party just a couple weeks after Easter came in handy this year as I was able to save a lot of extra jelly beans as well as get some on a major sale after the holiday.  I love the idea of displaying the cake pops this way.

Here are the original candy pieces I had made and decided I didn't like for the wreath.

These might have been the biggest hit with the kids...or maybe it's because they were closest to the edge of the table, but by the end of the party there were only a few left!  I took locations from the game and put up signs next to candy that resembled it, just to add a little cuteness.

Sweet Tart gummies!  I originally thought these would be fun on skewers and then I thought, "what am I thinking?  Skewers at a toddler birthday party?"  Yeah.  Glad I thought that one through.

I've been wanting to try these cake pops for a while and just never took the time to.  This was the perfect opportunity and they turned out great!  SusAnna's Sweets will definitely be adding these to their site!

One of my favorites: Laffy Taffy!

Marshmallow sticks!

Another fun pop display.  These cupcakes were a lot harder than they looked! 

I like how the black basket turned out with the ribbon threaded through it.  Unfortunately this is the best picture I have of it.  Cupcake cake bites and marshmallow cupcakes along with some very large dot candy!

Now...the cake!  I was very happy with the crumb coat.  It was the best I've done on corners, I think.

Here it is iced up, before attempting to smooth it out.  I made a mistake and stuck it in the fridge before smoothing it.  I didn't think it would make a difference, but with my time crunch it definitely did.  When I pulled the cake back out to smooth it and decorate it, I had very little time to work with.  I like to use the hot knife method when smoothing cakes but with it being hardened in the fridge it just did work.  So I just tried to cover up the really bumpy parts as best I could.

I could sit here and tell you everything I had planned to do that I just couldn't because I didn't have time, but I think I will just show you the cake and leave it at that.  :)  I think it turned out cute, even if it wasn't totally what I had originally planned out in my head.  The ice cream accident on the top is my favorite part.

I also like the cake bite cupcakes on it.

Okay, I will tell you one thing I was going to do different.  I wanted the letters in her name to be all different colors, but the white on white is okay too.

Red KoolAid?  At first I couldn't figure out if this was really smart and cute because it was a Candyland party, or just really stupid to have at a toddler's birthday party after just moving into a new place with nice carpet.  Thankfully it was a nice day and the kids were able to be outside a lot so we came out unscathed with zero spills!  I missed getting the plates, napkins, forks and spoons in the picture, but they were all different colors.  I loved that part of this theme.  And as you can see, part of my garland became a table decoration when Jesse decided to high-tail it through the hanging circles over and over at lightening toddler speed.

I can't believe I didn't get a better picture of these.  I made some candy beanbags out of felt for the kids to play games with.  The idea came from this post, although I think I actually like mine better.  :)  For some of them I painted on a peppermint and spiral design, and I used white thread to sew them so you wouldn't be able to see it very well.  The only thing is, I didn't have small beans, I only had lima beans, but I'm a big fan of using what you already have on hand if at all possible.  So I used the lima beans, and they worked great, but probably would have been even more fun with little beans.  

The kids had a blast with it.  We had them try to toss them into the bowls.  Fun times for all.  :)

I thought the treat buckets were fun.  I had a different color bucket for each kid.  Each bucket held an ice cream lollipop, a toothbrush, and then before leaving they got to pick whatever candy they wanted from the table to fill up their bucket.  I'm sure the mommies appreciated me.  ;)  It was a great party, our girl had fun.  That being said, if ever we have a birthday during a time when we are going through a major life change (like, oh say moving, for example) I will never do this again.  Haha!  I think if this ever happens again we'll be doin it up Chuck E Cheese style.