Recipe: White Sheet Cake (mid-1800s recipe)

White Sheet Cake (mid-1800s recipe)
rec.food.cooking/Joanne Cook (1993)

Here is a mid-1800s recipe for white sheet cake courtesy of my great-great grandmother, Lucy Garrett Hughes, and her cook/housekeeper, Janet MacLeod, both of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada. My husband and I used this as the dessert cake at our wedding in 1981.

White sheet cake

3 eggs
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup butter
3 cups flour
1 cup milk, or if you want a richer cake use blend/half & half cream/10% cream (the name of which depends on where you live!)
3 level tsp. baking powder
1 tsp salt
vanilla

Beat eggs until lemon colored. Cream butter and sugar; beat in eggs and milk. Sift together flour, salt, and baking powder; add liquid mixture and beat until well blended. Add vanilla to taste (I think I usually use about a tsp, but I like vanilla!)

Pour into a 9 x 13 pan and bake at 375 until brown on top and springy in the middle (about 35 minutes, I think)

Ice as you like. For our wedding we used two layers, mixed my grandmother's Seville orange marmalade with a bit of Cointreau, spread it between the layers and on the top and sides, and iced the whole thing with a basic buttercream with a bit more Cointreau in it. I've also used a walnut icing and raspberry jam filling, plain vanilla or chocolate buttercream, and strawberry or raspberry puree with whipped cream.

It makes a lovely rich-tasting but light textured cake.