Servings: 8 to 12
This versatile cake is a great base for other desserts, from a lemony roulade to chocolate-orange trifles to a decadent White Forest cake. It always comes out light and springy, yet sturdy enough to soak up flavorings without disintegrating. Bake it as a thin sheet, a square, or a round, depending on how you’ll be using it later.
Make Ahead Tips
A cake baked in the round or square pan may be wrapped airtight and stored at room temperature for 2 days or frozen up to 3 months.
A sheet cake should be made into a roulade within 24 hours. Otherwise it may dry out and crack when rolled. If you’re not using it right away, wrap it airtight and store at room temperature.
The author prefers Gold Medal flour for this recipe; a higher-protein flour like King Arthur will make the cake coarser.
Nowhere in this recipe does it say to use TWO 8 x 8 square pans, but apparently that's what it's supposed to be (based on comments below that I didn't read before I tried it). I pored the batter into ONE 8 x 8 pan, as the directions indicate, only to have the batter fill the pan almost to the top. I then re-read the directions to make sure I had it right. Obviously it didn't turn out. :( Wasted all my ingredients and time. PLEASE fix your directions. Very disappointing.
What’s all the fuss? I am making this cake later in the week and will be using four ounces of flour—which is just under one cup. Of course, flour is a broad term these days: various flours weigh various amounts; however, 4.5 ounces is fairly standard. A liquid cup holds eight liquid ounces. Half is four ounces. Get a scale and do it right. And trust that weight (a dry measure) is not the same as liquid (a wet measure). It’s weight vs volume (or how much space a liquid occupies, if you prefer).
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