Texas Sheet Cake – Celebrating Our Daughter with #CoolWhipFrosting ~ #CBias

Regular readers of my blog will know about our family’s ongoing saga of testing and moving with our high school aged daughter. For those of you who don’t…let me do a brief catch up for you!

We homeschool our 16 year old daughter Amber. She’s the kind of kid who when she gets interested in something, gets a little obsessed with it and focuses her energy into it hook, line and sinker. For her that happens to be video games, fantasy realms, writing and drawing. So it was no surprise to us that she decided a number of years ago that she was going to go to college to become a video game designer. Trouble is, in our neck of the woods, there is a lack of higher education institutes that offer good degrees in such things.

With some internet surfing early last year, we found out that the University of Texas at Dallas, offers a pretty respectable Arts & Technology program. It just so happens that my husband’s employer is also looking to expand their office in the Dallas area…hmmm…So last October we made a college road trip to check it out, with the idea to move down there.

(Really this post does have something to do with #CoolWhipFrosting, bear with me!).

We were (and more importantly Amber was) really impressed with the university campus, and while we were chatting with the admissions dean, he mentioned that they give out a full 4 year scholarship to National Merit Scholars. We were all like: “What’s that?”. And he replies telling us about the PSAT. (Now in our defense, we immigrated to the U.S. from Canada, and this is our first experience with high school and college here in America). At that point, Amber was determined to get a high enough score on the PSAT to earn herself a full ride to UTD, and we decided that we would move sometime between after she wrote the test here in SD and her senior year in high school. And here we are a year later, with our home up for sale and the PSAT under our belt.

Amber checking over the answers she got wrong on a practice test the day before she takes the PSAT.

The day before the PSAT, I went shopping at Walmart (want to see my entire shopping trip? Check out my Google+ album) to pick up some supplies to bake a cake, and celebrate this determined young lady, who we are so blessed with, REGARDLESS of the test score she receives.

I had in mind to make a cake resembling a chalk board that had a distinctive quote written on it – that showed her just how we feel about her and then we’d share it for dessert after dinner.

Since I was making it in just the time she was gone for the PSAT testing (about 3 hours), it needed to be quick. So I thought a Texas Sheet Cake would not only bake up fast, but would be highly appropriate since that is where the journey started, and hopefully where the journey will end!

TEXAS SHEET CAKE
2 sticks butter
1 c. water
4 tsp. cocoa
2 c. flour
2 c. sugar
1 tsp. soda
1/2 c. sour cream
1 tsp. salt
2 eggs

Preheat oven to 350. Boil butter, water and cocoa. Remove from heat and add flour, sugar, soda, sour cream and salt, and eggs. Pour into a 12×17 sheet pan, bake for 25 minutes. Let cool before frosting.

I also needed to have a prepared frosting, and thought it would be a great way to try out the new Cool Whip Frosting. Oh you didn’t know Cool Whip made frosting? Umm…neither did I before this! Yep, you’ll find it in the freezer section in Chocolate, Vanilla and Cream Cheese.

I bought the chocolate and vanilla flavors.

I achieved the color I like to refer to as “Chalkboard Green” with 36 drops of Great Value green food coloring. I went ahead and tinted the whole tub of frosting, although I didn’t need the whole amount to frost the sheet cake (which is 12″x17″!!).

The chocolate and the other tub of vanilla went in the icing bag which I used to frost the “wood frame” of the chalkboard and write the quote.

(Let’s just hope her grammar skills were better on the PSAT then mine on the cake!  The quote comes from the book/movie “The Help”, which I want to clarify if you didn’t know that and you think my grammar stinks…)

This is really great frosting to work with, it has a nice consistency. It stays in the freezer and then you take it out an hour before you need to use it (or defrost it in the fridge for 4 hours). I found it much easier to spread then shelf stable frosting.

I thought the vanilla was plenty sweet, but my husband thought it could have even been sweeter! The chocolate wasn’t as sweet, and has a good flavor. The only issue we had with it, was the cake was left out all day after I made it (from about 11 am to about 8:30 pm) – we ate a few pieces after dinner, and then Amber took the rest to share with her small group at church that night – and we found that the edges of the icing (the chocolate ‘frame’) slipped off the cake when it was being lifted out of the pan. I don’t know if it was because it got warm, but no one had complaints about the taste. Her friends said the cake was so good they wanted to adopt me!

If you want to learn more about Cool Whip Frosting you can connect with them on their Facebook page. Also check out some of Kraft’s Recipes and the Kraft Cool Whip Frosting Pinterest Board to find ideas to celebrate the ‘everyday’ in your life! Plus you can save:

I am a member of the Collective Bias™ Social Fabric® Community. This content has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias™ and Kraft Cool Whip. #CoolWhipFrosting #CBias #SocialFabric – All opinions are my own.

Tammy Litke, literally writes here, there and everywhere about this, that and everything, but her passion is and always has been keeping her family happy. She does so by making family friendly recipes, traveling to family destinations, watching 3D movies and playing video games with them and homeschooling her daughter.