Texas Sheet Cake

I baked this Texas Sheet Cake on Monday. It's so damn good, but so damn awful: sweet, gooey, chocolate, sweet, gloppy, crusty...hmm, this is not sounding too flattering to the recipe, is it? I'm not sure if Texas Sheet Cake is the institution in California that it is in the Midwest. It's like a cross between a brownie and a chocolate devil's food cake and sugary enough to make your teeth curdle. You bake it in a 9 x 13-inch pan (hence the term "sheet"), and it has a little bit of cinnamon in the cake batter (a slightly Mexican touch, and Texas is close to Mexico, but that's just a hunch).

Right after removing the cake from the oven, you pour a thin frosting/glaze over the cake. By not allowing the cake to cool before performing this step, the topmost layer of cake and the frosting become one, while the uppermost layer of frosting gets a micro-thin crust, almost like a layer of porcelain that shatters under your teeth before liquifying. Mmm.

This cake has been around now for five days, and I keep on eating on it. I have a big piece at lunch and a big one for dessert, but it's still just as good as the day I baked it. I can't stop eating it. Today is probably the last day this cake will be around, and then Joe and I can make a new beginning in our lives, freed of the yummy bondage of Texas Sheet Cake.