Berry Vanilla Sheet Cake with Coconut Sugar & Sourdough
Sheet cakes are one of my favorite desserts to make since out of all of the cakes, I think it is definitely the simplest one. No messing with cupcake liners or having to dole out batter evenly into the muffin pan like with cupcakes. No layering or frosting like with a layer cake. Just one simple sheet of cake in one pan, making this the perfect recipe to easily throw together for a summer gathering.
I like to bake using ingredients that are in season so that’s why I decided to incorporate berries into this sheet cake. We just bought a bunch of black raspberries from a local farm and I made a chia seed jam with it (easiest recipe ever - warm up berries in a pot until they start to break down, mash them up to your desired consistency, then add in about 1/2 tbsp. of chia seeds per cup of fruit, stir together and that’s it!) and that’s the jam I incorporated into this cake. Feel free to use any type of jam you would like - homemade or not - and any type of berry, whatever is the top choice in your family. You can also choose how much jam to incorporate - if you want just a subtle light berry taste go with the lesser amount listed below; if you want it to be very berry flavored then go all out and use the larger amount (or more!).
To naturally sweeten this cake, I decided to use coconut sugar. Coconut sugar is the dehydrated and boiled sap of the coconut palm flower. Because coconut sugar goes through minimal processing, it retains many of its inherent antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals - especially in comparison to the standard granulated white or brown sugars, which are heavily processed. For those of you who may not be a big fan of coconut, I just want to note that the coconut sugar does not have a noticeable coconut flavor. Instead, I think it just adds a nice light nutty almost brown sugar-ish flavor to the cake and other baked goods. Additionally, this recipe incorporates sourdough starter discard, which makes the cake super fluffy and moist.
Enjoy!
Makes one 9x13 cake
Ingredients
1 cup (2 sticks, 226 g) unsalted butter, room temp.
120 g (1 cup) coconut sugar, ground in a coffee/spice grinder
4 eggs, room temp.
2 tbsp. vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste
170 g sourdough starter discard
1 tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
275 g (about 2 and 3/4 cup) pastry flour
60 g milk
5-10 oz berry jam (you can use as much or as little as you want depending on how fruity you want the cake to taste)
Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease a 9x13 baking pan.
In a stand mixer, cream together the butter and coconut sugar until well incorporated, 3-4 minutes. Add the vanilla extract and mix on low. Add the eggs one at a time while the mixer is on low and mix until combined. Add the sourdough discard and mix briefly until incorporated.
In a separate small bowl, whisk together the baking powder, salt, and flour. With the mixer on low, add the flour mixture and the milk in 2-3 batches (i.e., add 1/3 of the flour mix, mix until incorporated, add 20 g milk, mix until incorporated, etc.).
At this point, you can either pour all of the batter into the pan and then top with berry jam or, if you would prefer to have more jam incorporated throughout, then pour just enough of the batter into the pan to coat the bottom, add some berry jam and swirl throughout the batter, top with the remaining batter, and then add more berry jam to the top and swirl again. By “swirl” I mean that you will want to distribute the jam in lines on top (if your jam is thick, it might be helpful to put it in a ziploc bag, cut one bottom corner, and pipe it out) and then use a knife or something similar and just run it through the lines to create a nice pattern.
Bake for 26-34 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
