Small Batch Baking

One of the Youtube videographers I watch fairly regularly is Whippoorwill Holler.  Ms. Laurie shares recipes regularly and because she was a school lunch lady she sometimes shares things she made for the school kids. One of her fairly recents posts was a small batch Texas Sheet Cake . Of course I had to try it because I do remember having it when I was a school kid. It was very good and since it was a small cake we did not have a lot leftover.

I also remembered a sheet cake from school days that was very much like the Texas sheet cake, but was a peanut butter cake with peanut butter icing. I used the basic recipe from Ms. Laurie's video and tweaked it to try and recreate the cake I remembered. TheHub went to parochial school and had no memory of said cake, but he was a willing tester even though he had nothing to compare it with. My first try was pretty good, the cake part was spot on but the icing was much too sweet. This is the result of my 2nd attempt.

Cake

1/4 cup water

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons peanut butter

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon vanilla

1 egg yolk

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup all purpose flour

1 1/2 tablespoons buttermilk*

pinch of salt

In a small pot add the water, butter and peanut butter. Cook until just melted, then remove from heat. Stir in the sugar and the vanilla. If you want to now you can put the mixture in a bowl but I just kept everything in the same small boiler. Let the mixture cool until it is lukewarm then toss in the egg yolk. Stir to combine well. Add the dry ingredients. mix well then add the buttermilk.

Pour into a greased and floured pan. (Who am I kidding? Spray that sucker with a baking spray) I have a 9 1/2 x 6 1/2 jelly roll pan that I used, but a pie pan or an 8x8 cake pan should work also.

It baked at 325 degrees in a convection oven (350 for a conventional oven? ) for about 16 minutes.  Do the touch test and see if it is done. (start checking after about 14 minutes) This makes a very thin cake, just a tad over 1/2 inch thick so it does cook quickly.

Set it aside to cool just a little while making the frosting.

Frosting

1 tablespoon butter

1 1/2 tablespoons peanut butter

1 tablespoon water

1/4 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons confectioners sugar

enough buttermilk* to make this spreading consistency ( about a tablespoon)

In a small pan melt the butter and peanut butter in the water.  Add the vanilla then stir in the confectioners

sugar. Add enough buttermilk to make the icing smooth. Spread it over the still warm cake, walk out of the room and don't touch it until everything is cool and the icing is set. 

This tastes just as I remembered it tasting and looks like the very thin cakes our school lunchroom offered.

If you try this let me know what you think. 

* I used buttermilk because we do not keep milk in the house but I always have powdered buttermilk in the refrigerator.  It was easy to reconstitute it.  I am sure regular milk would work just as well.