We love sheet cakes. We've written whole books on them. In this episode of our podcast, Mark is going to make a devil's food sheet cake in real time--a throw-back recipe that hits all the marks for a delicious treat.

Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough have written dozens of cookbooks, won lots of awards, and been on several best-seller lists. In this episode, they're cooking from scratch together, something no married couple should ever do.

This episode Devil's Food Chocolate Sheet Cake.

Welcome.

I'm Bruce Weinstein.

I'm the chef in Bruce.

And Mark.

Hey there.

And I'm Mark Scarborough.

I'm

the writer, and together we've published more than 25 cookbooks and won some

national awards like the I A C P People's Choice Award this year, baby,

and some international awards like the Gormand Award at the Paris Book Show.

Fifi and we've appeared on a number of national bestseller

lists.

We were two below 50 shades of gray this year.

I have always wanted to be two below 50 shades of gray.

I

may be the chef, but today I'm getting out of the kitchen because I've

got a secret As a writer, I haven't cooked a thing in years except maybe

bowls of kibble for the collies.

Woo,

woo, woo.

That's about to change.

Mark's headed into the kitchen.

Remember, he's a writer and he gets easily distracted, usually by bourbon.

Hey,

watch it.

I'm

doing the cooking and I'm gonna help you out, and I'm gonna guide him and I'm gonna

give him tips and I'm gonna judge him.

And so after 25 books, he can finally say, Hey,

I fucking made that

today.

Mark has to make a chocolate devil's.

He has to make it.

He doesn't just wanna make it.

And why is that, mark?

Well, okay, I'm a former academic and

what does that have to do with cakes?

Hey, gimme a minute here.

I got out of the literature teaching racket almost 20 years ago.

I never wanted to convince another.

Idiot Manchild, why he had to read Jane Air , whatever.

I thought I was done teaching lit, but now I lead book groups all

across our part of New England.

I teach lit classes and I always bring food, and I always make

it for

you.

True.

I married a chef, mother didn't raise an idiot, but this time

I wanted to make the cake

myself, and you're going to make something really.

Yes.

New Yorkers are so provincial about things.

I wanna try my hand at the Southern Standard, a sheet cake.

Now, for the uninitiated, I'm not talking about a cake and a nine by 13 inch pan.

I'm talking about something outta my southern

roots.

Something other than treason.

Watch it.

I've got relatives in the nra.

They haven't bathed in years.

They can take you out . Anyway, what I'm talking about is a cake

in an 11 by 17 inch baking pan.

It's kind of the American standard, a sheet pan with that half inch

lip around the, the whole pan.

And it's not insulated.

I know this much.

It can't be insulated or the batter won't set properly.

You know, it's the kind of cake I didn't know about grow.

I knew about layer cakes and Dobo Torts and Stroodles and Italian cream.

The only thing I knew about cheesecakes where they like had them a Mayberry R

F D, they looked cheap and easy, and to be honest, they reminded me of cafeteria

food.

I'll have you know that my grandmother was a lunch lady in a cafeteria back

in the days when they had professional bakers who worked in elementary schools.

Okay?

Anyway, chicas are the ultimate cakes for people who like frosting.

You end up with this thin layer of cake with lots of frosting on top

of it.

What I like about.

Is that I never have to portion out my frosting properly.

You know, you eat a layer cake sometimes and you run outta frosting before a

cake, or you run outta a cake before frosting when I have made sheet cakes.

You're right, there's always enough frosting with every bite of cake.

It works really nice.

Yeah.

And today it gets to be a

chocolate buttercream.

It does not.

You're making a chocolate butter frosting.

There's a huge difference between butter frosting and true buttercream,

and we will talk about that later.

But right now, let's get you in the kitchen and let's get you.

Before I got this mixer going here, I did two things.

First of all, I mix two thirds of cup cocoa powder and a cup of boiling

water in a bowl, and I've set that aside to cool for about 15 minutes.

And in a second bowl, I've whisked together two cups plus two tablespoons

cake flour, a teaspoon of baking soda, and a half a teaspoon of salt.

Okay.

Why'd I do what I

did?

Well, mark, you mixed all of your dry ingredients the way the

recipe told you to for evenness.

So when you mix those dry ingredients into your wet ones later, your

Mark's batter is going to be.

Even what I mean by that, there won't be pockets with extra salt.

He won't have pockets with extra leavening and his cake will rise evenly.

The same thing happens with that cocoa.

It softens up that cocoa, mixes it with the water, and this way Mark's battle will

be smooth and even and rise perfectly.

Okay,

so now I'm beating 12 tablespoons of butter with one and three

quarter cups white sugar.

And the butter was cold to start with, which is why it just takes so long.

Here's the deal.

There's this old recipe cliche about room temperature butter.

I know you've read it.

It says in recipes, you know, X amount of butter at room temperature,

plus X amount of sugar, and you beat that together, blah, blah, blah.

The way that all happened, and it's actually wrong, is from the sixties

and handheld mixers, when those little convenience handheld mixers came in

into vogue, they couldn't handle chilled butter, and so recipes began to be

written with this room temperature butter, in order to accommodate.

Handheld mixers, unfortunately, room temperature, butter can't really hold

air structure the way chilled butter can.

The fat is kind of loose in there and it doesn't hold the

air molecules as it should.

So really you need chilled butter to build good structure as you beat it

with the sugar as it holds air in place.

So I took my butter out.

I caught it into little bitty bits.

I put them in the bowl, and then I set that aside and I gathered

all my other ingredients together.

And this way the butter is chilled.

It's not as frigid as when it comes out of the refrigerator, but it's chill

and it's taking a really long time.

Yeah, but it's paid off because look at that consistency.

It's light and it's fluffy.

It's still a little grainy, but it's perfect.

There's so much air in that mix.

It's absolutely.

So now it's time to beat in those eggs, but stop what?

Don't do them all at once.

Let's do one at a time, and we have to make sure that each.

Egg is incorporated completely before the next one, but even more

important than that, on your exit room temperature, they have to be, do you know

why I'm only blonde in appearance?

Yes, I know why?

Because one cold eggs will chill down the butter in the batter.

The butter's a little warmer now from being beaten.

Into this batter and chilled eggs could chill it down and cause little bits

of butter to fall outta suspension.

Yeah.

But even more important, number two, room temperature.

Eggs have a loosey goosey protein structure.

They're all relaxed and elongated.

The proteins aren't cramped up with the cold.

And these relaxed strands can mix into the batter and build a really nice structure.

The rule in almost all cakes is cool, fat room temperature, protein, or in other

words, cool butter, room temperature,

eggs.

Okay, so now goes in half cup sour cream, also at room temperature and

the cocoa powder mixture, which is cooled to a bout room temperature

and two teaspoons vanilla extract.

And I let the machine beat those in until the batter's smooth and.

Seems about right to

me, eh, not until you turn the machine off.

Scrape down the sides and start it up again.

Just make sure everything is blended, really smooth and well.

So while we're stopped, I have a question for you, Mr.

Ryder.

Why is it called a Devil's food cake?

Ah, my kind of thing, cultural history.

Well, listen, a Devil's food cake probably originated as a chocolate

angel food cake, or maybe a chocolate sponge cake, a really tall, light,

airy cake with chocolate in it.

But these days, and over time, the idea has kind of changed, and

now it just means any intense.

Chocolate cake with lots of chocolate inside of it.

In this case, the recipe that Bruce created used two

thirds of cup cocoa powder.

That's a pretty big amount for this cake, and it gives it a kind of

rich, chocolatey, intense textural chewiness that makes it devil's food.

Perfect.

Let's get this batter in the oven.

Okay, marque his oven heated to 350 degrees.

Thank you.

Heated.

What is this recipe?

Cliche, preheated.

How do you preheat an oven?

What does that mean?

Aren't you just heating it to 350 degrees and then maintaining it there?

You're not preheating it before you heat it.

I said it before and I'll say it again.

Southern Baptist can be so excitable.

Yes, we can.

So I've removed the beaters and I'm ready to fold in the cake flower mixture.

I just dump it in there and then fold it with a rubber spatula

until I see no white streaks of

batter, and you're folding it so that the gluten doesn't have a chance

to make that batter and cake tough.

If you beat it, the gluten will make the cake tough.

Gluten is just protein and flour.

So now is the time when you fold earlier, we beat it like crazy

to get air in with the sugar.

Eggs and the butter.

Now we're folding it gently.

Cooking is hard work.

Yeah, it is.

And you can get back to writing later, but right now scrape

that batter into the sheep pan.

It's pretty thick.

I'm getting it into the pan, but I'm also gonna have to spread it around to

get it completely out to the corners.

It's, it's a thick batter.

Okay.

Here's an unexpected difference between Bruce and meat.

Earlier when I greased this sheet pan, I put a little butter on some wax paper.

I spread it all over the inside of the sheet pan, and

then I added a little flour.

I shook the pan this way and that till I got a fine film of flour over everything.

I tapped out the excess flower into the sink.

I did all of that, but that's not how Bruce greases and flowers a sheet band.

What do you do, Mr.

I used

baking spray.

I love it.

I found it in the early nineties Baker's Secret.

It was, uh, baking spray with flour early in the mix.

And it makes cooking, which is such hard work, so much easier.

Huh?

So much for the ozone layer.

Yeah.

But we'll never have a cake.

Stick to a pan again and let's get this cake in the oven.

The cake came out of the oven after about 18 minutes.

Sheep cakes are thin, so they cook super fast, and it's been cooling on

a wire wrap for about two hours now.

And now you're ready to frost it.

I love.

Buttercream.

Too bad

you're not making

any.

That's not fair.

I got two sticks plus two tablespoons of butter here.

Yeah, true.

It's not fair.

And yes, you are making a kind of buttercream, but not

a real French buttercream.

That's a cooked frosting made with even more butter than you have out there.

Plus egg yolks and a hot sugar syrup.

And that might be a little too advanced for you right now.

Always

something to aspire to.

Okay, so I'm gonna, Simple butter frosting.

Hey, Mr.

Ryder, what's the difference between a frosting and an icing theology?

I have no idea what you're talking

about.

Look, it's a southern thing.

It has to do with Methodists.

I'll explain it to you later.

Anyway, this frosting's made with all that butter plus six ounces

of melted semi-sweet chocolate, a little heavy cream and soul.

I'm gonna mix that for about two minutes until it's

super smooth, and I noticed your butter was at room temperature this time,

which is terrific because here we're not looking to beat air into this, so it

rises nicely like we did with the batter.

We want this butter at room temperature so it's smooth and

velvety and creamy and luscious.

Okay, now I'm gonna add confectioners sugar, powdered sugar, whatever you.

The recipe says it should take between three and four cups,

and that's a huge range.

But the reason we do that is because confection is sugar.

Just like flour is affected by humidity.

It could be heavier, it could be lighter, it could have more

moisture in it, it could have less.

So you're gonna start mark by putting half a cup in and we'll see what happens.

And then we'll add another half cup and then we'll start adding a little

less than a half cup at each time.

We don't want to go too much at once, cuz we can't take that if you go too far.

Okay, I got it.

The frosting mounds on the back of a rubber spatula, it holds its shape.

Yet I can spread it right on the

cake.

Not with that rubber spatula.

You don't.

Why not?

You'll tear the cake.

You'll end up with uneven patterns of frosting.

You need the right tool for the right job.

You

always have to be right, don't you?

Well, maybe,

but you need an offset spatula here.

See the offset spatula is the perfect tool.

It's kind of like a trel that a mason uses when he builds a brick wall.

It spreads the icing evenly, the handle is normal, and then the blade bends

down and then goes flat again, and it gives you a long flat surface that

you can spread evenly and beautifully

satisfied, one properly iced cake done with an offset spatula.

You'd rather be right than happy,

wouldn't you?

Do?

I have to choose now my favorite.

Tasting and judgment.

Get over yourself.

Oh, it's very light.

You did great.

It

is, it's surprising light.

Um, I like the creamy frosting.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

It may not be a real buttercream, but Oh my God.

No.

It's quite delicious.

Fabulous.

It's, it's, I'm, you know what?

You just go on.

I'm gonna

keep eating for a while.

No, you have to swallow.

Cause I'm gonna ask you, mark, what'd you learn today?

Okay.

I learned that you complain a lot about making things for book groups, but

they're kind of easy to move and . Okay.

I learned that batters need to be beaten a lot before you add the

flower, but not so much after.

In fact, really not much at all.

After and I learned the importance of an offset spatula.

Okay.

Okay.

Forgetting an even layer of frosting on a sheet cake.

And

what did you learn?

Well, I learned a sheet cake.

Like a lot of things you've introduced me to from the south is

a delight, but I'm not quite sure about the relatives in the nra.

Patience,

my pupil patience.

This recipe for Devil's food cheesecake comes from a monumental

900 recipe tome, the ultimate cook.

Available wherever fine books are sold, but you could find this specific recipe

on our website, Bruce and mark.com.

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Check it out.

Devil's food sheet Cake.