High Altitude White Texas Sheet Cake
White Texas sheet cake is a vanilla and almond flavored white cake baked in a half sheet pan, topped with butter pecan icing. This easy cake is large enough to feed a crowd, and stays moist for days.
All recipes on Curly Girl Kitchen are developed for high altitude at 5,280 feet. See FAQs for adjusting to higher or lower elevations.
Equipment
- 13x18 Rimmed Baking Sheet
Ingredients
Cake
- 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour, fluffed, spooned and leveled
- 1 ¾ cups granulated sugar
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- 1 cup unsalted butter
- 1 ½ cups water
- 2 large eggs
- ½ cup full fat sour cream
- 1 tsp almond extract
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract
Icing
- ½ cup unsalted butter
- ¼ cup whole milk
- ¼ tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- ½ tsp almond extract
- 2 ½ cups powdered sugar
- 1 cup pecans or walnuts, chopped
- ½ cup unsweetened coconut flakes, optional
Instructions
Cake
- Preheat the oven to 350 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven. Grease and flour a 13x18 rimmed baking sheet.
- In a bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
- In a saucepan, combine the butter and water. Over medium heat, bring the mixture to a boil to melt the butter, then remove from the heat.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs, sour cream, almond extract and vanilla extract, until smooth.
- Add the hot butter/water mixture to the bowl of dry ingredients, and whisk just until combined. Add the egg/sour cream mixture and whisk until combined.
- Pour the batter into the prepared pan, and tilt the pan so the batter spreads out evenly to all four corners. Bake the cake for about 22-25 minutes, until the top springs back when gently touched, or a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
- Set the pan on a wire cooling rack, and immediately spread the icing over the hot cake.
Icing
- While the cake is baking, you can get the icing ready.
- In a saucepan, combine the butter, milk, salt, vanilla and almond extracts. Over low heat, warm the mixture until the butter is melted. You can keep this on low heat for a few minutes until the cake is done baking.
- After taking the cake out of the oven, you can finish the icing by adding the powdered sugar to the butter/milk mixture and stirring until smooth and thick. Stir in the chopped pecans and the coconut.
- Immediately, pour the warm icing over the hot cake, and use an offset spatula to thinly spread the icing out to the edges.
- Let the cake cool completely before cutting into squares. To speed this up, you can let the cake cool at room temperature for 30 minutes, then refrigerate for 1 hour.
- Cut into 24 squares.
Notes
Store leftover cake in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 2 days, or in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.
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