Accidental Texas Sheet Cake!

Like so many things, this started out as a BIG MISTAKE.

EPIC FAIL!

PINTEREST: FAIL!!!!

You guys know my mother's helper Casey:

Casey's amazing. She's talented, funny, smart, hard-working, and she's been with us since before she was two years old... so fourteen years I've been part of this young lady's life... Which means I can mock her on the World Wide Web and not get into trouble, LOL!

Casey gets here almost an hour before the after-school kids, so she decided to make brownies. From a mix... and then somehow, as she was making the brownies, she got this funny look on her face.

Funny as in "Will Ruthy kill me?"

(Ruthy rarely kills people, but carpenter ants: she shows no mercy!)

"Ruthy, I might have just ruined the brownies... totally. Instead of 1/2 cup of water, I put in two cups of water."

Have I mentioned that Casey has a boyfriend now? And that on occasion her attention might be split? SIGH..... :)

Chocolate soup. That's what we had, chocolate soup! So I laughed and she laughed, and I let her live but I thought ... well... baking is all about ratio, it's all mathematical! So while Casey made another batch of brownies, Christina and I played with the soup.

I grabbed out my Betty Crocker cookbook and checked ratios of liquid and eggs to dry ingredients.

BOY WERE WE OFF, LOL!

But... we added 2 cups of flour and one cup of sugar to the chocolate soup.

BETTER! MUCH BETTER!

And then we actually did something smart, we did a few practice mini cupcakes to see how close we were to edible food....

OH MY STARS. The minute I tasted it, I knew!

Texas Sheet Cake! We used my big broiler pan to bake the rest (that was a rookie mistake because it has a groove and the sheet cake pan should be flat) but it still came out A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

Moist, tender, chewy, it just kind of melted in your mouth the way Texas Sheet Cake should.

We were so surprised and happy! :) Big grins in the kitchen as the kids streamed home from school!

Here's the Recipe!

2 Family size Fudge Brownie mixes
4 eggs
2 cups water
2 cups flour
1 cup oil
1 cup sugar.

Mix and bake at 350° in either cupcake form (the tiny cupcakes were amazing, and everyone loved them!) or in traditional large cookie sheet or sheet cake pan. Texas sheet cake should be thin, not thick like regular cake, and it doesn't take long to cook so check it after 10-12 minutes.

We topped it with Hershey's "Perfect Chocolate Frosting", a recipe I share often because it's a crowd-pleasing favorite!

1/2 cup butter, melted
2/3 cup Hershey's cocoa
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Melt butter in medium saucepan. Remove from heat.

Whisk in cocoa and salt. Add powdered sugar and milk, stir or whisk briskly until sugar is mixed in. Add vanilla, and whisk until smooth. (This is a really quick-mix frosting!) If too thin, add a little more powdered sugar, but the ratio (there's that word again!) is generally perfect!