Comments on: Texas sheet cake

By: allison from Dallas

allison from Dallas — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:17:48 +0000

either way, its our family favorite-the paper i wrote the recipe down on is dog eared, yellow and tattered, and now LOST (hence i looked up SHEATH CAKE on google)but it says “Texas Sheath Cake” on the top in my 9 year old handwriting.

no canola oil though in my recipe and you cook the chocolate in both stages–the cocoa is NEVER in the dry ingrediants–thats down right BLASPHEMOUS!

By: foodnearsnellville

foodnearsnellville — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:33:24 +0000

I did a brief survey of web sites that spoke of (or had recipes for) the Texas sheet cake, and I saw two proposed reasons why it could be called a sheath cake. One claimed it was named after the sheath pan (a 13×9x2 inch pan with lid), and the other, proposed by OED contributor Barry Popik, is that perhaps ’sheet’ sounded too close to something rude, and ’sheath’ was a more polite alternative.

By: A brief history and survey of the Texas sheet cake « Food Near Snellville

A brief history and survey of the Texas sheet cake « Food Near Snellville — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 06:56:18 +0000

[…] through family and otherwise can’t tell you where it came from. The blogger Wasabigelatine presents the cake, once again handed down through the generations, a family recipe. The Blogger Pioneer Woman […]

By: Sly

Sly — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 19:05:52 +0000

According to a very old cookbook I found (Southern Heritage series) the cake was called “Sheath” cake because of the way the poured-on frosting enrobed (coated) the cake. Since then, most people have assumed that it was a mispronunciation of “sheet” — but a sheet cake is any cake cooked in a sheet pan, while “Texas Sheath Cake” usually refers to a specific recipe. the only difference if your recipe and the old one that I found is that they use shortening instead of oil, and they boil the butter/shortening/cocoa mixture before adding it to the dry ingredients. they also add 1 cup of chopped salted peanuts and an optional cup of flaked coconut to the frosting after the sugar is mixed in, which probably made the original taste less sweet.

By: wasabigelatine › Cool as a cucumber

wasabigelatine › Cool as a cucumber — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:48:35 +0000

[…] may be misleading; if your hands are as big as my husband’s, it might end up tasting like Texas sheet cake […]

By: Cat

Cat — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 07:15:46 +0000

All due respect, Texas ain’t in the South. It’s a different country.

By: mirascod

mirascod — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 01:05:33 +0000

It’s a sheet cake, Texas pronunciations be damned! It looks pretty tasty. Southern women (and Texas is the South for better or worse) can bake. My teeth hurt just looking at the frosting.

By: Cat

Cat — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 23:18:39 +0000

I don’t get the “sheath” cake thing, but judging by searches it’s pretty common. No one seems to give an etymology or decent explanation for “sheath.”

“Sheet” makes perfect sense to me.

Perhaps the only way to settle it is the way my roommate from New Orleans and I settled our dispute over pralines. We agreed to call all pralines made in Louisiana “prah-lines,” all pralines made in South Carolina “pray-lines,” and inferior pralines made elsewhere by whichever name we preferred.

By: Budget Babe

Budget Babe — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 19:05:25 +0000

i’m a word nazi, too, but whatever you want to call this cake, it looks like heaven to me!