Velma's 50th Birthday! 

Chocolate Sheet Cake   

The base of this recipe is not my own. It actually comes from the Pioneer Woman Cookbook entitled The Pioneer Woman Cooks, Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl.  

I purchased the book from Borders when the Pioneer Woman (Ree Drummond) was going to be in Dallas for a book signing. Here's how it went down. I purchased the book the weekend prior to the signing which was on a Monday. My Mom picked up the wrist band for me from Borders at 10:30 a.m. that Monday morning. I headed to Borders straight after work and there was NOT ONE SINGLE parking space to be found in that whole huge parking lot! I'd say I arrived in the lot at 5:25 p.m. and the signing wasn't scheduled to begin until 7:00 p.m! I mean to tell you I circled that dang parking lot for 20 minutes looking in every nook and cranny that parking lot had. I exited and re-entered and finally, feeling defeated, left after 20 minutes with no luck! People are mean about parking spaces though! It reminded me of that scene in the movie Fried Green Tomatoes - ahhh, I sometimes wish I was braver, or had more insurance! Anyhoo, The Pioneer Woman actually has a blog that I highly recommend you check out at this link.

For this recipe of Chocolate Sheet Cake I used every single ingredient and direction for combination of ingredients that the Pioneer Women writes in her recipe. I did, in true Shauna form, add my own touch so to speak to the recipe for the Birthday Girl of whom the cake was made. 

"It's Velma's 50th Birthday," so I was told on Monday of this past week! "Wait, What, When?" was my reply! I adore Velma and a Birthday as special as 50 deserves a special cake. She sooo doesn't look 50 by the way and no I'm not just saying that! I asked what her favorite type of cake was and while I didn't have the time on my hands to make her absolute favorite (German Chocolate Cake). I think she dug this one just the same! 

It starts out with incredibly simple ingredients that almost every single person has on hand and if they don't they ought to be ashamed of themselves! All ingredients for the cake itself are pictured below. I did not include the secret ingredients of the cake in the photograph. I want to see if you can figure it out I will post what the secret ingredients were at the very end of this post. Don't cheat and scroll ahead please and also thank you! 

I did not take a picture of the naked cake because you would have figured out the secret ingredient in the cake so let's move on to the Frosting.

Here are the ingredients for the frosting - ready to go! I forgot to push the bottle of vanilla into the picture as I was sort of in a hurry but it was in there as was a secret ingredient to be disclosed later on! 

And here we have it! The finished frosted cake with the '5' and '0' candles appropriately placed waiting for Velma to come in from an office down the hall for me to light the candles and for all of us to sing her HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I don't think I mentioned that she wasn't as surprised by this cake as I intended her to be. I'm horrible at keeping secrets, just awful and when I went to tell her Happy Birthday first thing in the morning on Friday I broke down and told her that I had made her a birthday cake.

Slicing this cake is really easy, but really fudgy, I cleaned off the knife a few times while slicing it so as not to load up too much on frosting! A pretty darn close to perfect slice of the cake sits before you now! Ahhh, I have to say it was pretty good. Moist and tender with some variances of texture. I have some things I might want to change next time, but that's the same with almost every recipe I try.

So you wanna know what the secret ingredients were? After pouring the cake into the pan, I sprinkled some semi-sweet chocolate chips. What quantity of measurement? I can't really tell you how much because I have no idea, it was literally 3 handfuls and I just eyeballed it. For the icing, since Velma is a fan of German Chocolate Cake I put some shredded coconut in the frosting. How much? Once again, I have no idea, I eyeballed it again and just took the little baggy of coconut and poured some in until I felt there was enough. I urge everyone who bakes to get creative like this! Mix some stuff in, add a surprising texture! Just be sure to tell people if you added something because we have to remember the folks with food allergies out there!