The crowd-friendly cake that even nonbakers can make
My friend Abbie Argersinger is an accomplished cook and baker. Visiting in her Austin, Texas, kitchen recently, swapping recipe ideas and talking about all things food, we came around to what to bring to a get-together. Call it research.
Abbie couldn't say enough about Texas sheet cake. She's from Rhode Island, but she has lived in Texas long enough to praise the "just rightness" of the recipe everyone seems to know there, typically made with cinnamon and pecans.
I hadn't thought much about sheet cakes until that moment. Certainly, they were the centerpiece of many of my childhood parties, birthdays celebrated with square portions of single-layer, frosted cake. I'm pretty sure cupcakes nudged sheet cakes over a few years back, but there are times when a sliver of cake, not an entire cupcake, is all I want. For a big crowd, sheet cakes can be more adjustable and accommodating than a box of cupcakes.
There is another reason I got to thinking about sheet cake: decorating, or specifically the lack of it. Some people were born with a star-tipped pastry bag in their hand while others, like me, are ham-handed with buttercream roses. A sheet cake needs nothing more than a table knife or, preferably, an offset spatula, to spread frosting from corner to corner. A dusting of chopped nuts around the edges is fancy enough.
A sheet cake is most often baked, carried and served out of the pan, but which one's best? Search the web for recipes and some are made in a 9-by-13-inch pan while others call for a baking sheet - a whopping 18-by-13 inches. In testing, I found that a 10-by-13-inch pan produced the sheet cake of my dreams - a ratio of about half cake, half frosting. The grocery store had two options on the baking aisle, one with a cover.
It's not that any old cake recipe will work as a sheet cake. A fluffy yellow cake will dry out quickly. This is the time for buttermilk, plenty of eggs and a carrot-laced batter that bakes into a delicious spicy crumb. Because my recipe is oil-based, the cake will remain dense and moist - yet not mushy - far longer than one made with butter.
Because carrots are the centerpiece, how they are broken down is important. Too finely grated, their flavor gets diminished. So use the large-holed side of a box grater or the food processor's grating disk.
Some people like to mix in pecans. Others like pineapple or coconut, and still others prefer golden raisins. It's a big world, people: Add what you like to your carrot cake batter, but don't overdo it. This is not granola. A mere cup and a half of extras is all this cake will tolerate. I'm happy with how chewy crystallized ginger and rich, buttery pistachios cozy up to the carrots here. There's texture, there's spice and there's the pretty green of the nuts.
Also, I am one of those people who claim cream cheese frosting is the raison d'etre for carrot cake, and therefore I like to smooth an orange-scented version across the top. Searching for a frosting that might accommodate a broader swath of eaters, and swayed by the smooth texture, buttery flavor and flexibility of nut-based cheese, I've included a frosting variation: a nutty, honey-sweetened, nondairy frosting. (If you're looking for an entirely dairy-free dessert, omit the buttermilk in the cake recipe. The crumb will become slightly more dense but will not otherwise suffer.)
Because this cake is refrigerated and has staying power, it is as delicious on Day 3 as it is on Day 1. That makes it a sensational solution for a houseful of guests and a handy treat for a long beach weekend. As a special bonus, if you're in an unfamiliar kitchen, this cake stirs together without any special equipment.
Sheet cakes are humble and marvelously useful. As my friend Abbie says: "Sheet cake is easy to put together ahead of time. You can even bake it in a pan from the grocery store, which means if you never see the pan again, it's no biggie."
• Cathy Barrow is a Washington cookbook author.