Quick and Easy Vanilla Sheet Cake
on Sep 18, 2015, Updated Feb 26, 2020
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure policy.
Quick and Easy Vanilla Sheet Cake is a cake-mix recipe for when you’re short on time! Whether you’ve got a birthday to celebrate, or you’re just looking for a simple vanilla cake recipe, this dessert will not disappoint!
I love a good sheet cake. Try these delicious recipes too: Grandma Shoaf’s Quick and Easy Chocolate Sheet Cake and Pumpkin Sheet Cake with Caramel Frosting.
Vanilla Sheet Cake with Sprinkles
This cake. You guys. This vanilla sheet cake is so ridiculously easy, but it’s still super delicious. Plus, any food you can add sprinkles to (for example: donuts, ice cream, caramel apples) is going to be good. Am I right? This is another “cheater recipe,” because you start off with a box of cake mix, add some fool-proof homemade icing and a heavy hand of sprinkles, and you have yourself one perfectly semi-homemade dessert that takes about 20 minutes to throw together.
Cake-Mix Recipe for Any Occasion
I like this vanilla sheet cake recipe all year long because it’s easy and it is really simple to adapt it to what I want. For Halloween, I dye the icing orange (just add a few drops when you add the vanilla) and add some fun Halloween bat sprinkles. For Christmas, you can keep the icing white and add red, green, and white little ball sprinkles. For birthdays, you can make the icing whatever is the favorite color of the birthday person and let them man the sprinkles. My kids think that I’m the world’s best mom any time I let them add sprinkles to something on their own. It’s the little things, isn’t it?
Can I make sheet cake ahead of time?
Yes you can! Not only is this cake easy, it also travels great and can be made a day ahead of time. Always a good trait in a dessert during the holidays.
How many people does a sheet cake feed?
This particular sheet cake serves about 20.
Quick and Easy Vanilla Sheet Cake
- Total Time: 42 min
- Yield: serves 20 1x
Description
Quick and Easy Vanilla Sheet Cake is a cake-mix recipe for when you’re short on time! Whether you’ve got a birthday to celebrate, or you’re just looking for a simple vanilla cake recipe, this dessert will not disappoint!
Ingredients
For the Cake
- 1 box Betty Crocker cake mix (Yellow, White, White Butter Recipe, and Yellow Butter Recipe all work great)
- Ingredients called for on the back of the box
For the Icing
- 1/2 cup butter (no margarine here please!)
- 1/4 cup milk
- 4 to 4 1/2 cups powdered sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Make the cake batter according to the package directions and spread it evenly into a large greased, rimmed sheet cake pan (also called a Jelly Roll pan, should measure about 17 1/2 inches by 13 inches). Bake until the cake is cooked through. You’ll start to smell the cake and the cake will spring back when touched lightly, 12 to 15 minutes.
- While the cake is cooking, in a small sauce pan heat the butter and milk over medium heat until the butter melts, stirring often. Remove from the heat. Add the powdered sugar to a large bowl (you can also use a stand mixer here) and slowly whisk in the melted butter mixture into the powdered sugar. Stir until well combined and no lumps remain. Add the almond and vanilla extract and stir to combine.
- While the cake is still warm (let it sit for maybe 5-7 minutes, you want it hot but not pipping hot), drizzle the icing over the warm cake and then use a spatula to spread it to the edges. If you try to spread too much or go over the same place again and again you are going to pull up the top off the cake and get crumbs in your icing. The goal is to quickly spread it out and move on… too much fussing will just make a mess.
- Add the sprinkles while the icing is still warm. The sprinkles will also cover any messes you made if you tried to spread the icing too much.
- The cake is great warm, at room temperature, and even the next day. No need to refrigerate over night, sugar is an excellent preservative. I have a plastic lid that fits my sheet cake pan and makes traveling a breeze. I highly recommend a lid for your pan.
- Prep Time: 30 min
- Cook Time: 12 min
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Oven
- Cuisine: American
If you liked this Quick and Easy Vanilla Sheet Cake recipe you might also like:
- Homemade Soft Oreos (from a cake mix)
- Grandma’s Cheater Chocolate Sheet Cake
- Cake Mix Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Homemade Soft Oreos from a cake mix
- The Best Chocolate Buttercream Frosting
- Pumpkin Cupcakes with Whipped Cinnamon Icing
Enjoy this Easy Vanilla Sheet Cake with a crowd! And don’t forget the milk.
I’m trying to make 40 servings for my local soup kitchen so sheet pan cakes make sense. The soup kitchen is ‘take out’ only due to Covid so an easily transportable cake piece is best. Also, I like a generous serving… if I’ve provided too much they can save half for the next day. The cake mix boxes say 10 servings so i would normally buy 4 boxes (or maybe even a 5th to make sure I’ve got plenty). But this recipe says to use just one mix box for a 13 x 17 pan. Isn’t that going to make a very short cake? Couldn’t I put 2 or even 3 mixes in one pan? Also the cake box says it makes 10 servings, this recipe says 20. What to do ?
Yes, it’s a very short cake and when you cut a pan that large you have a lot of flexibility on the number of servings depending on the size you’d like to cute the cake. You can’t fit any more boxes of cake mix on this kind of pan though because it will over flow.
Do I absolutely have to add the almond extract? will the recipe work without it?
I’m just trying to work with what I have in my house at the moment and I don’t have almond extract.
It’ll work great, just replace it with vanilla extract!
I cook for the homeless shelter twice a month. this worked so well! Thank you! Maybe next time I’ll swirl chocolate and vanilla for a marble cake.
That’s so cool Beth! Here’s my chocolate sheet cake recipe (super easy), might be a good place to start! https://www.blessthismessplease.com/grandma-shoafs-quick-and-easy-chocolate-sheet-cake/
I love the addition of almond extract in the icing 🙂
Yummy! You have great ideas. Making this for my relief society sisters as a treat on Sunday. Thanks!