Brown Butter Mini Sheet Cake with Maple Frosting
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Oct 06, 2020, Updated Nov 30, 2020
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This Brown Butter Mini Sheet Cake with Maple Frosting the perfect seasonal cake. It’s super fluffy, nutty in flavor and the maple frosting is light and delicious.
Clover Sonoma Dairy
I love Clover Sonoma and find myself reaching for their milk, butter and other dairy products when I’m at the market. If you’re unfamiliar with their brand, their company is a
family-owned business partnering with multi-generational family farms. And their commitment to family farms creates a difference in quality that sets their brand apart.
Clover Sonoma works with 30 family farms in Northern California, primarily in Sonoma and Marin counties, who follow rigorous quality standards that go above and beyond U.S. and California requirements. This ensures that each farm meets their quality, animal welfare, and environmental stewardship standards. Their animal welfare standards are backed up by American Humane, who certified Clover Sonoma as the first dairy in the U.S. for the humane treatment of their cows 20 years ago.
In addition to product integrity, Clover Sonoma is a conscious company. As a Certified B Corporation, Clover Sonoma meets the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. It’s important for us all to be conscious consumers, so we can feel good about the brands we purchase.
For this recipe, I used the Clover Sonoma Organic Milk, Clover Sonoma Organic Butter and Clover Sonoma Organic Heavy Cream!
Brown Butter in Cakes
I love brown butter; it’s in so many desserts, but it has to be done correctly. When you make brown butter, you are essentially removing the water in the butter and evaporating it. The milk solids that are leftover are caramelized and that’s where the flavor comes from.
Baked goods rely on this moisture to hydrate the baked good. In some instances, it’s critical to create steam. SO, this is the reason why we still have oil in this recipe. We get the best flavor from the butter and the oil works as a contributor to moisture.
How to Make Brown Butter Mini Sheet Cake with Maple Frosting
- Brown the butter. I like to do this as my first step so it has time to cool. To brown the butter, just add it to a saucepan over medium heat and let it cook until the milk solids are caramelized. Stirring this every so often makes sure that it cooks evenly.
- Whisk together the dry ingredients. We have all-purpose flour, baking powder and salt.
- Beat together the brown butter, sugar, oil and vanilla bean pod. You don’t need a vanilla bean but it does enhance the brown butter flavor so I like to use it.
- Next, add the eggs and mix it up again.
- You’re going to add the flour and milk, alternating between the two, until you’ve used up all of the dry mix and milk. This allows the cake batter to slowly hydrate.
- Transfer the batter to the pan and bake it up for about 23 to 25 minutes. Let it cool to room temperature.
- While the cake is cooling, you can make the frosting. It’s super simple. I like to beat the butter first just to get it nice and smooth. And then I sift in the powdered sugar, pinch of salt and add in the maple syrup and heavy cream.
- Heavy cream in frosting makes it super light and fluffy. It’s my go-to ingredients that I love.
Tips and Tricks
- To make this cake ahead, bake the cake, allow it to cool to room temperature and then wrap it tightly in plastic wrap. You can keep it in the fridge for up to 2 days OR you can freeze it for up to 3 months.
- If you want to make the topping cookies, I suggest making them the day before just to allow for some of the work to be broken up. I used my chai sugar cookie recipe and used a bat cookie cutter shape and attached the edible eyeballs with a teeny dot of frosting.
If you make this recipe, let me know on Instagram!
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(This post is sponsored by Clover Sonoma. Thank you for supporting the sponsors that keep A Cozy Kitchen cozy.)
Brown Butter Mini Sheet Cake with Maple Frosting
Ingredients
Mini Sheet Cake:
- 1/2 cup Clover Sonoma Organic Unsalted Butter
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 2 tablespoons neutral oil
- 1 vanilla bean, scraped
- 2 large eggs
- 1/2 cup Clover Sonoma Organic Whole Milk
Frosting:
- 3/4 cup Clover Sonoma Organic Unsalted Butter
- 2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
- 2 tablespoons maple syrup
- 1 tablespoon Clover Sonoma Organic Heavy Cream
- Pinch of kosher salt
For Decoration:
Instructions
To Make the Mini Sheet Cake:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and line an 8×8-inch cake pan. Set it aside.
- To brown the butter, place a small saucepan set over medium-low heat. Add the butter to the pan and once it’s melted, it will begin to foam up and bubble a bit. Allow it to cook until you begin to see lightly browned specks beginning to form. Give it a stir and cook until it’s browned. You should also start to smell its nutty aroma. Remove it from the pan and continue to stir to cool it down.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the all-purpose flour, baking powder and kosher salt. In the bowl of a stand-up mixer (you could also just do this with an electric mixer and a large bowl) another medium bowl, beat together the browned butter, sugar, neutral oil and vanilla bean seeds for about 1 minute. Add the eggs and beat until combined.
- Pour the dry ingredients in the wet ingredients, rotating with the milk. This will help hydrate the batter evenly. I like to scrape the bottom of the bowl with a spatula to make sure there aren’t any bits of flour hiding.
- Transfer the batter into the prepared cake pan and place in the oven for 23 to 25 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Allow to cool in the pan for about 5 to 7 minutes. Then invert onto a cooling rack and cool until it’s room temperature. It’ll probably take a full hour.
To Make the Frosting:
- In a bowl of a stand-up mixer, add the butter and beat it until next level. Place a sieve atop the bowl and sift in the powdered sugar, along with the maple syrup, heavy cream and pinch of salt. Beat for a full 2 minutes, this will ensure a super fluffy frosting.
To Assemble the Cake:
- Pour all of the frosting on the cooled sheet cake and spread it around, creating cute swoops as you go. Top it with some cookies or sprinkles. Slice it up and serve.
Notes
- To make this cake ahead, bake the cake, allow it to cool to room temperature and then wrap it tightly in plastic wrap. You can keep it in the fridge for up to 2 days OR you can freeze it for up to 3 months.
- If you want to make the topping cookies, I suggest making them the day before just to allow for some of the work to be broken up. I used my chai sugar cookie recipe and used a bat cookie cutter shape and attached the edible eyeballs with a teeny dot of frosting.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
This cake was a huge hit at my house! We loved it. In fact, I took some to my mom and she requested I make it for Thanksgiving! Is there a way to double this?
Hi! Yes, you can definitely double the numbers. My new site is being built right now and hopefully it’ll be up for Thanksgiving. Each recipe will have the ability to “double the quantities” 🙂
These are so cute!
The cake looks so delicious and cute. Thank you for sharing.
I came across the Instagram post of this cake this morning and I knew I had to make it. So I did, lol! The cake is delicious, it has that caramelly, nutty taste. I didn’t have a vanilla pod so I used paste and it was just as tasty. The buttercream is really tasty too, I did add a bit more maple because it tasted very buttery. Instead of cookies I topped my cake with maple candied pecans and a fall sprinkle mix.
SO glad it worked out and you loved it! i love paste and use it often–it’s so good.
Hi-thanks for a great and easy recipe. #3 under instructions to make the sheet cake says to add sugar to the four mixture but also to the butter egg mixture. I was not sure if 1/2 cup of sugar needed to be added to the wet and dry ingredients or if it was a typo. Thanks!
oooo let me fix that–so sorry!
I grew up with Clover and went there on a field trip as a kid! The best!
aww love hearing this! I want to go! haha
Wonderfully moist with such a delicious frosting! My family gobbled it up 😉 A nice fall treat!