Sheet cake

I was bored on Friday evening, and I decided to make a recipe off the Pioneer Woman's website, since I heart her blog more than work itself these days, her Chocolate Sheet Cake. Because really, two people need a half-sheet cake, right?*

As she states, this cake is delicious and super SUPER easy. I actually forewent (foregoned? ha) the mixer and mixed this one by hand and felt very proud of myself for having done so.

Somewhere off to the side, I've mixed the dry ingredients (sugar, flour, salt) in a large bowl. In this saucepan, I've mixed one cup of butter, 4 big tsp of dark cocoa (hence the v. dark picture), and boiling water. It looks like oil. I was a bit skeptical of how this would turn out. Off to another side, I mixed buttermilk, eggs, and vanilla. I also forgot to mix in baking soda, which led to me putting the cake in the pan, seeing the soda box, pouring the cake back out of the pan, adding the soda, etc. etc. Don't do that. It was a pain.

Here is the cake, all soda'd up and ready to bake. Much prettier than those hideous countertops. As I was told to do, I make the lovely fudgy frosting while the cake was baking - more butter, more cocoa, more sugar. I might be inclined to throw some coffee in sometime too, but that may just be me shooting off my ill-informed mouth. And here we are at the end, a very poor photo. I couldn't stop eating this cake, especially when it was only a few hours old and still a bit warm. I cut myself a normal-sized piece. Then another little wedge, just to try it. Then another wedge. Then another. I mean, this is a thin cake after all. Right? RIGHT?

*Tragically, this turned out to NOT be an insane amount of cake for us - because the dog decided she too enjoyed the cake and jumped up and licked the icing off of about 5 slices worth - they had to be tossed. She got a little buzzy from it, but that was all. So essentially one side of the cake was lost to Daisy, making it a large, but normal sized cake. And I am sharing a few pieces with friends. Oh whatever, we're just pigs. There I said it. We're pigs.