Seniors 2024 Vanilla Sheet Cake

Bubby is graduating high school this year! It feels like I just dropped him off at preschool 5 minutes ago, and it's hard to even remember everything that happened in between.

He's participated in an afterschool social group for the last two years, and yesterday was their farewell event. When they asked parents to send in snacks, I knew a cake was in order.  And I had all the ingredients in the pantry to make a Vanilla Sheet Cake.  Something I've actually never made before!

I used this recipe from Joy of Baking. I used a Pyrex 9x13 glass pan, which is great for transporting cakes because it has handles and a lid. More on that later... The cake was supposed to take 35 minutes in the  oven but thankfully I checked at 33 minutes and it was ready to come out. In fact, it looked a bit overbaked, and I hope it wasn't dry.

I took the cake out of the pan, which I'd lined with parchment, to cool on a rack so I could frost it faster. In the meantime, I made a simple vanilla buttercream.  For this vanilla on vanilla cake, I decided to try a trick I've been reading about for making buttercream appear white. Since the yellow tones of the butter can come through in the frosting, it's recommended to put a drop of purple food coloring into it, and supposedly it whitens the batch.  Unfortunately I must have overdone it, because my buttercream ended up having a slightly greenish tinge. 

I put the cake back in the pan to frost and did a thin crumb coat, then froze it for 10 minutes. Next I applied a thicker coat and smoothed this out as best I could with a spatula and a piece of acetate. Finally I piped a border using a Wilton 1M tip. Incredibly I put the exact amount of buttercream needed for the border into the piping bag!  One batch of buttercream, using two sticks of butter and 4 cups of confectioners sugar, was just right for this sheet cake.

I added some colorful sprinkles around the edges and fondant letters spelling "Seniors 2024". I couldn't resist substituting a red heart for the O in Seniors.  

After the cake was ready I wasn't able to use the handy lid that comes with the container, because it would have crushed the border. And so to keep it covered overnight I had to jury-rig a cover, using another 9x13 pan over it as a "lid", and held in place with painter's tape and aluminum foil. I forgot to get a picture of this but it looked like a science experiment!

I told the teacher to keep all of the cake, even if there were leftovers, but I was still happy when I picked up Bubby and there were only crumbs on the bottom of the cake pan.  As soon as he got in the car, he thanked me for making the cake and told me it was really good and that everyone had liked it. 

Seniđź’“rs rule!



 

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