Texas Sheet Cake

Years ago I worked at a bakery in Asheville, North Carolina, where one of our staple desserts was a chocolate buttermilk cake (“choc butt cake” in kitchen shorthand) with a ganache frosting. It was just an iconic chocolate cake—the chocolate cake you think of when you close your eyes—and everyone loved it.

The thing about choc butt cake is that it breaks some of our preconceived notions of decadence and richness. The cake is rich and soft, but it’s made with oil, not butter. Choc butt cake has a deep chocolate flavor, but it contains no actual chocolate, just cocoa powder.

There are a couple important lessons there. One, oil-based cakes tend to be moister and softer than those made with butter, and they stay that way longer whether stored at room temperature or in the fridge. Two, cocoa powder often delivers a richer chocolate flavor than chocolate (a phenomenon that any Oreo-lover is familiar with).

Joy’s Texas sheet cake recipe is a choc butt cake—made with oil, buttermilk, and cocoa powder—which is what makes it so delicious. Not all Texas sheet cakes follow this formula, but we obviously think it is a winning one. The recipe calls for water or coffee as part of the liquid element—I recommend using coffee, which will draw out the flavor of the chocolate even more.

The jury is very much out as to why this is called “Texas” sheet cake. It could refer to the size of the cake or the origin of the recipe, which may have appeared in a Texas newspaper before becoming a beloved potluck staple. Others posit that the frequent presence of pecans atop the chocolate frosting is Texas-coded. We omit the pecans entirely from our recipe, but you can add them at will. We topped the cake shown here with some special bourbon-soaked cherries (a close friend gives us a jar every year). Of course, fancy maraschinos or Amarena cherries would also be lovely.