The garden grew up all of a sudden. You can see a whole set of pictures at the 6 week mark on Flickr. The child provides some sense of scale, she’s over 4 feet tall. Herbs and greens are ready for harvesting, there are a lot of green tomatoes on the vines, and we’ve been picking cucumbers, summer squash and zucchini with a whole lot of other stuff right behind that. There are tiny acorn and butternut squashes developing, and tiny cantaloupe and honeydew melons. Not yet for watermelon, but I live in hope.
On to cake! Same child who helped in the garden wanted to make cake. We decided to make the
Pioneer Woman’s Best Chocolate Sheet Cake Ever, printed the recipe off and headed to the kitchen.
The cake is delicious, but if you’re an inexperienced baker you should watch a couple of issues. The pan size isn’t specified, so you have to watch the baking time closely. Also, she says to use ungreased; I greased mine and it still stuck a bit. Yes, even with all that butter in there. Your mileage may vary, but I say grease that sucker. You might even flour it for good measure.
Also, the amount of butter. It calls for a pound between the cake and frosting. I cut the butter, powdered sugar and milk in the frosting in half and it still made plenty to cover the cake. And while the cake was good, if I made it again I’d reduce the butter in the cake by half, too, and make up the difference with applesauce. Again, your mileage may vary and sometimes maybe you need to eat cake with a pound of butter. Who am I to judge?
My mom went for a professional pastry course recently. She was instructed to butter the bottom, but not the sides.
So your cake can rise and clings to the sides, and once it’s done, you can use a knife or a off-set spatula to loosen it from the pan.
I tend to find the Pioneer Woman’s recipes too heavy for my taste. Not at all surprised you want to halve the butter.
The thing is that it’s soooo hard to find applesauce here or I’d try that.
I would think you’d want at least the bottom of the pan buttered for sure. It’s much harder to remove cake from the bottom than sides. And then there goes your presentation.
If applesauce is hard to find, can you get zucchini? Grated zucchini probably would’ve worked well to sub for half the butter, too.
This is not my preferred method, but what my mom does is cut a piece of grease paper or baking paper that fits the bottom of the pan, put it there, and then pour the batter in on top. I’m a oil and flour the bottom girl.
The thing is, I could probably make my own applesauce. It just seems a lot of effort for something I’m not going to eat on its own, yanno?
Ooh. Yeah. Zucchini’s not a problem. Do you have any recommends on what to read on this kind of substitutes? I’ve heard of using either, but I’m not sure about measurements and how much to sub for how much butter?
I use the same measurement for the substitute. So in this case, 1/2 cup of applesauce or grated zucchini instead of 1/2 cup of butter for the cake batter. And since it doesn’t need to be melted, add it at the same time as the eggs and buttermilk. I sub applesauce for half the shortening or oil in recipes all the time. It makes for slightly moister cakes and cookies but that’s really not a problem. Now that it’s zucchini season, I’ll be using that, too.
I haven’t had great results using the paper lining method, I’d go with oil and flour.
Ooh, applesauce in oatmeal and raisin cookies ought to be amazing. I might be crazy enough to make applesauce just to try this.
Does it not affect the taste at all, though? I mean, I don’t want to taste apple in my chocolate cake — usually I wouldn’t anyway.
That’s a lot of butter. lol But it looks yummy.
Congrats on the garden. It’s really taken off.
No, both applesauce and grated zucchini just blend in. You don’t taste either.
It’s a terrifying amount of butter. It’s good, but it was still pretty rich even after reducing 1/4 of the butter.
Thanks! It is really amazing to see how different it is in such a short time.