Marbled Sheet Cake
Yesterday was my 20th birthday, which is so crazy for me to think about. I don't think I've really processed the fact that I'm not a teenager anymore. Birthdays to me are always a little bittersweet - on one hand I'm glad that I'm getting older and being able to start fresh in a sense; on the other, I can't help but look back on all the missed opportunities over the past years. That's especially true with this birthday - I'm entering my twenties, and while I'm excited about that, I'm also not really sure I did everything with my teenage years that I wanted to.
My actual birthday was pretty chill. I had a couple classes, but other than that I really just took the day for myself and didn't feel the pressure to be productive. I don't regret that. I did, however, make myself a birthday cake! I knew that because I'm doing this project, it had to be a Claire Saffitz recipe, and I felt like I wasn't really ready for any of the layer cakes at this time, so I settled on her Marbled Sheet Cake from What's for Dessert. Claire sells this cake as a homemade, higher quality version of one of those grocery store cakes with a super light, bouncy crumb and artificial frosting. She's aware that some of the dessert purists may thumb their nose at it, but I am extremely non-judgmental when it comes to desserts, and I'm open to giving everything a fair shot. I actually share her sentiment that the texture of store-bought cakes are really difficult to replicate - I know it's because of all the stabilizers and preservatives, but I feel like they're often really tender and fluffy, and sometimes homemade cakes can just be a bit... dense. It's my life goal to find a cake that marries the taste of homemade and the texture of store-bought.
Another eyebrow-raising (to some) feature of this cake is its addition of mayonnaise (!), which Claire says helps it achieve that coveted light, tender crumb. It honestly makes sense to me - I don't think people realize this, but when you're combining eggs and fat for a cake batter, you're essentially creating an emulsion just like mayonnaise, so why not streamline the process a bit? Claire recommends Hellman's, but I will admit that I hate mayonnaise on its own and could not justify myself buying a whole jar just for this recipe, so I went rogue and made my own. At first, I followed Samin Nosrat's methods of whisking an egg yolk vigorously and slowly streaming in oil, but that unfortunately resulted in egg soup. I don't think my emulsion was stable enough when I started to increase the amount of oil I added. After a few more tries, an extra egg yolk used, and a food processor (a birthday gift from my very amazing family) dirtied in the process, I finally produced something that looked a lot like mayonnaise. I ended up with a little bit less than the recipe called for, and because of the extra egg yolk it may not have had as high of a fat content as store-bought, so I was worried my cake would turn out a little on the drier side (spoiler alert: it was fine). If you do make this cake, get a jar of Hellman's and don't go through the trouble that I did. But then again, I think the mayo hack is really only practical if you eat a lot of mayo and have a jar of it in your fridge at all times. If you, like me, are not that person, then there are obviously many other cake recipes that do not use mayo. You're better off making one of them.
This is otherwise a very standard cake recipe. Having made several of Claire's cakes by now, I'm getting very familiar with the drill. Of course, this is a marble cake, so half of the batter gets mixed with some cocoa powder and brewed coffee to create the chocolate part of the marble. The two batters then get swirled together, which is very pretty and satisfying. I noticed that the vanilla batter was a little bit thicker than the chocolate one, probably because the chocolate had extra liquid added in the form of coffee, but they baked evenly. I expected the cake to bake relatively flat, but it rose more than I expected. Up until now, I have halved the amounts of leavening agents to adjust for altitude, but for this recipe I only reduced them slightly. I have to say, I am very happy with the adjustments I made for this recipe, and I feel like I've finally found my footing in the world of high-altitude baking.
This cake uses a type of frosting called ermine icing, which is basically a cream cheese and butter-based frosting that's thickened with a cooked flour and milk mixture. It sounds strange, and I was definitely skeptical while making it. It almost felt wrong to be adding this gloopy, gray flour mixture to a lovely pile of whipped cream cheese, but to my surprise, it turned out really nicely - it was bright white in color, not grainy or gloopy in the slightest, and very light and fluffy. Claire was right that it's an upgraded version of store-bought icing, but to be fair, anything with cream cheese has me sold from the beginning. That being said, I was a little sad about covering the beautiful swirly pattern of the cake with frosting - it felt a little wrong. The final step was to pretty much shower the cake with sprinkles. I really went to town with the sprinkles, because I am of the philosophy that you can never have too many of them. I know they taste like nothing, but they are extremely pretty and make this cake in my opinion.
This is a very fun cake. It's super nostalgic, and while it does involve a few special steps, it's generally low effort and casual for a special occasion-type dessert. The cake itself had a very bouncy, almost spongy texture which I thought was very delightful. I was worried there wouldn't be enough fat in my homemade mayonnaise, and maybe the cake would've been slightly more tender if I had used store-bought, but I was nonetheless very pleased with the texture - it definitely wasn't at all dry. That being said, I feel like the overall flavor of the cake was a little one-note and overly sweet for my personal taste. To be honest, the actual cake didn't really taste like much to me. I did really like the frosting though - the tartness of the cream cheese was really needed to help balance out all of the sweetness going on elsewhere.
Overall, this cake really made me happy, in two ways. First, it was a very classic, nostalgic, unsophisticated-but-in-a-good-way birthday cake. Second, it helped me get my altitude baking groove back, and I feel a lot more confident about the adjustments I should be making going forward. That being said, and I don't want to sound like a snob, but this isn't really the type of cake I feel like eating most of the time. I feel like I made a really good version of it, it did exactly what I wanted it to do for me, and for that reason I don't feel like I have the need to make it again. But if you love very traditional, sweet, birthday-style cakes (and happen to have mayo in your fridge), then this might be the recipe for you.
Verdict: 7/10
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