Less Sugar Texas Sheet Cake Recipe (Just as Easy)

This Texas Sheet Cake recipe features an ultra moist chocolate cake topped with a crackly chocolate glaze with less sugar than the church cookbook classic version of the cake. Updating this cake has been a goal for me since I revised Moravian Sugar Cake and my Vanilla Sheet Cake. As with the other two, you won’t miss the extra sugar.

this …

Taste	Texture
Chocolatey	Tender, moist

Active time	Total time	Yield	Difficulty
10 minutes	40 minutes	15 pieces	Easy

My History with Texas Sheet Cake

Texas sheet cake is probably the #1 cake I’ve eaten in my lifetime. It’s been the centerpiece of countless birthdays, potlucks, and casual Tuesdays. My great-grandma called it “Poor Man’s Brownies.” She and her sisters would often add their chocolate glaze (my recipe uses a revised version of their glaze) and a can of pie cherries (in true Bavarian fashion) for a chocolate cherry cake that we’d eat after a round of pinochle. I learned how to play pinochle in the kitchen of my Aunt Christina’s house, but I never learned to love the cherry version of this cake!

Aside from that, my Mom loved making this cake. She’d often make it for an after school treat and store it in the oven to save on counter space. Let me tell you I’ve turned the oven on many times not remembering or knowing that there was cake in the oven!

I give this brief history to let you know that I’m not revising this recipe out of spite or to get clicks, though obviously, I’d love for people to try my version. This is a cake I’ve always loved for its simplicity and its ease of preparation. I tell my students that it’s the only cake you *really* need to know how to make.

Why Texas Sheet Cake is One of the Best Cakes You’ll Ever Make

1. Ridiculously easy: This cake needs no mixer, no complicated frosting. If you can melt butter, you can make this cake. This cake is the best argument for why homemade cakes don’t take much more time than a box cake to make. There is no time-consuming decorating needed, so literally anyone with zero skills can make it. It’s the first cake I’ve taught all my kids to make and I’ll do the same for my grandkids when the day comes.
2. Ultimate chocolate comfort bake: This cake is perfect in its homey feel. The ultra moist fudgy texture may not be as aesthetically pleasing as a chocolate layer cake, or as decadent as a flourless chocolate cake, but it’ll more than make up for that in its accessible cozy feel.
3. Feeds a lot of people: My family always has made Texas sheet cake in a 9×13 pan, but if you bake it in a jelly roll pan, it will feed even more people. It’s a cake that’s a party in a pan.
4. Crackly chocolate glaze: My great-great aunts chocolate glaze is inspired. As much as my taste buds have changed and I now usually skip the sugary frosting (see how to cut out even more sugar below), there’s no denying the magical beauty of how the shiny chocolate glaze crackles when you cut the cake. It’s lovely.

Why Texas Sheet Cake Needs A Makeover with Less Sugar

1. 2 cups of sugar is too much: I talk about this in my recipe for Moravian Sugar Cake, but the longer I’ve made European cakes, the more I’m convinced that we need way less sugar in our American style cakes than we think. When I read old cookbooks, I’m always asking the question–why does this cake use this much sugar? You know the old story about cutting off the ends of the pot roast thinking it was a secret trick only to discover that it was how ladies fit the roast in the pan? It’s like that.
2. Sugar is taking away flavor: Have you ever had something so sweet that all you taste is the sugar and it almost burns out your taste buds? That’s how Texas sheet cake hits me. By taking out a portion of the sugar, you give the actual underlying flavor of the cake a chance to shine.
3. The texture will not suffer: Sugar is important in cakes for keeping a cake moist and tender. Still, I’ve learned that you can remove a portion of that sugar without negatively affecting the texture. If my cake stays moist for days in 10% humidity Colorado, I know it will continue to stay moist for you where you live.

How to Make Texas Sheet Cake

1. Prep the Pan: Spritz a 9×13 pan with a little cooking spray, and then line the bottom of the pan with a piece of parchment

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   .
2. Melt the Butter: Melt the butter with the water, milk, and cocoa. Once the water boils, whisk out any lumps in the cocoa and butter until smooth.
3. Mix the Dry Ingredients: Stir together the sugar, flour, baking soda, and salt together in a small bowl. Adding the sugar with the flour will keep the flour from getting lumpy in the cake batter. Add the dry ingredients into the hot buttery cocoa water and stir until everything is moistened.
4. Add in the Eggs: Crack the eggs into a small bowl and break them up with a fork. Add the eggs and vanilla to the batter and stir just long enough for all the flour to disappear and to create a smooth batter.
5. Bake the Cake: Scrape the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 28-30 minutes for a 9×13 pan, about 18-22 minutes for a half sheet pan and about 15-20 minutes for a jelly roll pan. While the cake is making, make the glaze.
6. Make the Glaze: Bring the sugar, half and half, and butter to a boil in a small pan over medium heat. Whisk everything once the mixture starts boiling, and then let it boil for 1 minute. Turn the heat off and add in the chocolate chips. Stir periodically until the chocolate melts and the glaze is smooth.
7. Finish the Cake: Let the glaze cool until warm and then pour it over the top of the cake.

How to Cut Out Even More Sugar from Texas Sheet Cake

While my family has always always made a chocolate glaze for Texas sheet cake, there’s no law saying you can’t frost it with something else. Here are 3 frosting choices that’ll make for an even less sugary cake.

1. Thick Ganache for Cookies: This is usually my choice for frosting this cake. Ganache has no added sugar unlike the chocolate glaze, so it’s naturally less cloying. If you use dark chocolate, it’s even better.
2. Ermine Frosting: Ermine frosting

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   has such a lovely fluffy texture and is much less sweet than powdered sugar based frostings. Use it if you want the contrast of white frosting on a dark cake.
3. Powdered sugar: There’s not a single cake on Earth that isn’t made prettier with a little shower of powdered sugar. Keep the cake naked and sprinkle on the powdered sugar just before serving. No one will miss the frosting.

Other Less Sweet Desserts

• Black Bean Brownies: A house favorite, these dairy free, refined sugar free brownies are impossibly moist and so very very good.
• White Bean Blondies: Like Black bean brownies, just with white beans.
• Moravian Sugar Cake: Like the classic, but with much less sugar.
• Vanilla Sheet Cake: The absolute best yellow birthday cake you can make in a snap.

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