Superbowl Sunday

I decided to use this year's Superbowl logo to decorate a cake for the party we're going to tonight. I volunteered to make a dessert and then Todd said I should make a cake that looked like the logo. The lines were pretty clean and straight so I decided replicating it shouldn't be too hard. Using a few skills I picked up in my Wilton classes, I think I made a pretty decent logo cake.

For the cake itself, I used Pioneer Woman's Best Chocolate Sheet Cake Ever recipe. This cake recipe is really quick and easy, you don't even need a mixer to make it. I made 1.5x the recipe and baked each layer in a 10x14 jellyroll pan.

For the filling, I used the chocolate frosting from the recipe, omitting the chopped pecans (since I didn't know if anyone at the party would have nut allergies) and increasing the powdered sugar by about 1 cup to make it a little thicker since it was going to have to hold together on its own and not just be served from the pan. The recipe below reflects my changes.

For the buttercream icing, I started with Magnolia Bakery's classic buttercream recipe but had to add a lot more powdered sugar to make it stiff enough to frost the cake.

Cake:
3 cups flour
3 cups sugar
1/4 tsp salt
6 heaping T cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups boiling water
1 1/2 cups butter
3/4 cup buttermilk
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray pans with baking spray or butter and flour. Combine flour, sugar, and salt in a large mixing bowl and set aside. In a saucepan, melt butter over medium low heat. Add cocoa powder and stir together. Add boiling water and allow mixture to boil for about 30 seconds. Remove from heat and pour over the flour mixture. Gently stir the mixture until all the dry ingredients are incorporated.

In a measuring cup, measure the buttermilk and add beaten eggs. Add baking soda and vanilla and stir well. Add mixture to the cake batter and stir until well incorporated. Divide batter evenly between pans, smooth the tops with a rubber spatula and bake for approximately 20 minutes. Cool in pan for approximately 5 minutes and run a knife around the edges to loosen. Invert onto a wire rack and then using a second wire rack, flip right side up and cool completely.

Filling:
7/8 cup butter (1 3/4 sticks)
4 heaping T cocoa powder
6 T milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 - 1 1/4 pounds powdered sugar

Melt butter in a saucepan over medium low heat. Add cocoa powder and stir to combine. Remove from heat and add the milk, vanilla and powdered sugar. Stir together until as smooth as possible. There will likely be some small chunks from the powdered sugar (you can sift the sugar to eliminate more if you want). Once cakes are cool, pour mixture over bottom layer and smooth with an offset spatula. Top with second cake layer and frost as desired.

Frosting:
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup milk
2 - 2 1/2 pounds powdered sugar
Gel food coloring as desired

Beat softened butter in the bowl of a stand mixer for about 3 minutes until light and fluffy. Add 4 cups powdered sugar, vanilla and milk. Beat about 3-5 minutes until well incorporated. Scrape down sides of bowl with a rubber spatula as necessary. Continue adding powdered sugar about 1-2 cups at a time until the frosting reaches the desired consistency. To frost the cake, the frosting should hold its shape on a spatula but fall off when you turn the spatula over, to do detail work, the frosting should be stiffer, when you turn the spatula over, it shouldn't fall off. Put a generous amount of frosting on top of the cake, smooth with an offset spatula and then go around the sides with the excess frosting.