Recipe Notes: Yellow Sheet Cake

4 March 2020

Recipe from The Perfect Cake, America's Test Kitchen, 2018, p. 104; recipe also available online but for a layer cake.

Continuing my adventures with cake, I made my first yellow sheet cake. This is not a lemon cake, so what makes it yellow? How is it different from, say, a white cake? I found an article online that does a pretty good job of explaining the differences between white cake, yellow cake, and vanilla cake. Now I know, which is a good thing.

The cake was easy to make and took only 75 minutes between starting and taking the finished cake  out of the oven. It does use a lot of bowls, though. The dry ingredients—cake flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt—were whisked together in a bowl. In a second bowl (a  large measuring cup to facilitate pouring) the wet ingredients—buttermilk, egg yolks, melted butter, vegetable oil, and vanilla—were whisked together. Egg whites were added to the bowl of a stand mixer with some cream of tarter then whipped, with some sugar, to form stiff peaks. The whipped egg whites were transferred to a bowl (that makes four, if you're counting) and the dry ingredients were poured into the mixer bowl. This was mixed on low speed and the wet ingredients were slowly added.  The beaten egg whites were gently folded into the batter and this was put into a greased 13x9" pan and baked at 325°. The cooled cake was frosted with vanilla frosting made by beating butter, cream, vanilla, and salt with confectioners' sugar.

This was a good cake, certainly worth making again. It had a rich flavor, slightly suggestive of a custard, a tight crumb, and good moistness. Traditionally yellow cake is served with a chocolate frosting and that would be a good choice for this recipe, as was the smooth, light frosting that I used. I slightly overheat the eggs making them harder to fold into the batter, something to watch out for next time,