Pioneer Woman's Chocolate Sheet Cake

When I get bored, I tend to cook or bake. Well, after dinner tonight, I got bored. Realizing that I pretty much had all of the ingredients on hand for Pioneer Woman's chocolate sheet cake, I thought I'd give it a try. I did make some changes: I halved the recipe, I used Hershey's Special Dark Dutch Process Cocoa, subbed sour cream for buttermilk, baked the cake in a 9x13 pyrex dish because I don't have a sheet pan with sides, and I omitted the nuts in the chocolate glaze. Additionally, when I made the chocolate glaze icing I ran out of powdered sugar. I had maybe half of what I needed. So, I just incorporated some milk chocolate icing from the can (judge all you want). The sugar in the icing helped mute some of the cocoa-ey taste, but didn't do much to thicken it like the powdered sugar would have.

The results were pretty tasty. Because I poured the warm chocolate glaze over the warm chocolate cake it sort of melded with a texture like molten chocolate cake, which in my opinion really can't be beat. When you taste each piece separately, the cake itself turned out light and fluffy, and the glaze chocolatey without being overly sweet.

You can get Pioneer Woman's recipe at this link

And here's my halved, modified recipe below:

Ingredients for Cake:

• 1 cup flour
  
• 1 cup sugar
  
• 1/8 tsp salt
  
• 1 stick of butter
  
• 2 tbsp cocoa
  
• 1/2 cup boiling water
  
• 1 egg
  
• 1/2 cup sour cream
  
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
  
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
  

Ingredients for Glaze:

• 1 stick butter
  
• 2 tbsp cocoa
  
• 3 tbsp milk
  
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
  
• 3/4 cup powdered sugar
  

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees
   
2. In large mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, and salt.
   
3. In saucepan on medium-low heat, melt butter, add cocoa and stir to combine. Add boiling water to chocolate mixture and raise heat to bubble mix for 30 seconds.
   
4. Pour the mixture in saucepan over the top of the flour/sugar mixture, and stir gently to lightly combine.
   
5. In a separate bowl, beat the egg and add sour cream, baking soda and vanilla. Stir to combine.
   
6. Add the sour cream mixture to the chocolate mixture and stir well to combine.
   
7. Pour into a 9x13 pyrex dish and bake for 20-25 minutes
   
   While cake bakes prepare the glaze-
8. Melt stick of butter on medium heat and add cocoa powder, stirring to combine. Let bubble for 30 seconds then reduce heat to low.
   
9. Add the milk and vanilla and stir to incorporate.
   
10. Add the powdered sugar and stir well until smooth
    

Pour the warm chocolate glaze over the warm cake and serve!