A sheet cake has been a celebratory dessert for generations. Birthday parties, graduations, and even funerals are often graced with a large frosted rectangle. Their ease of assembly and large size make them a go-to choice for any occasion.
But they haven’t necessarily been the most glamorous option. We’ve all seen the sheet cakes sold in supermarket bakeries—the ones with loopy cursive greetings and colorful piped rosettes. The convenience has made the dessert ubiquitous; it also means that most of the sheet cakes we encounter are the same, with plain flavor combinations and overly sweet frosting.
The pendulum, however, is starting to swing in the other direction. Sheet cakes are coming back in a big way, and they’re a far cry from the store-bought stuff.
Bakers are reinvigorating the rectangular cake with more thoughtful recipes and elaborate decorations. At the NYC bakery From Lucie, Lucie Franc de Ferriere tops her sheet cakes with organic arrangements of flowers, dried fruit, and puddles of jams and lemon curd. Mina Park, the brains behind the baking project 99, specializes in elaborately decorated cakes with pristinely piped ribbons of frosting that are almost too beautiful to eat.
The sheet cake is shifting towards the ornate not only in their flavors and decorations, but also the scale. As reported in the New York Times, hosts are opting for sprawling sheet cakes that stretch several feet in lieu of tall, towering desserts.
Delaney Lundquist, an interior stylist based in Charlotte, North Carolina, was one of the first to identify the trend. It even inspired her to serve a gigantic tiramisu at her own wedding in May.
A long sheet cake doesn’t need to be limited to weddings, either. In celebration of The Glenlivet’s bicentennial, artist Laila Gohar created a 200-inch cake with delicate piping and shiny gems of candied fruit.
“For me, it was really important to highlight what we're celebrating both in in what we make, in that it’s this very beautiful, long celebratory cake, but also within the flavor itself,” Gohar says. The jam in the center featured apricot and peach, notes found in The Glenlivet’s whisky. Even the cake itself was flavored with the brand’s Fusion Cask—a Scotch aged in bespoke casks made from repurposed bourbon and rum barrels.
Gohar’s cake required 12 entire sheet cakes to stretch to its full length, with intensive preparation needed to scale, transport, and decorate it for the event. While that’s hardly practical for people hosting celebrations at home, she says that home cooks can adopt the same spirit of generosity and beauty with their own baking projects.
“It's about the thought and the care and the consideration because that's the heartbeat of hosting,” Gohar says. “It’s really about showing people that you care and that you've made an effort."
If you want to delve into more detailed desserts, few recipes capture the spirit of sheet cake summer quite like a flag cake. The Americana staple is a showstopper for a reason: the thoughtfulness and care that goes into the piping and decoration is a far cry from what you get from most store-bought cakes. Your friends—and your future self—will thank you for the extra effort.
