Texas Sheet Cake Cookies (with cake mix)

• For ease and the most intense chocolate flavor, I use a box of Devil's Food cake mix.
• A great time-saving option when is comes to icing the cookies, is to melt a tub of ready made chocolate frosting which you will be able to get in most stores.
• Save the parchment paper the cookies are baked on to place under the wire cooling racks so the melted icing will drip onto the paper. Saves paper. Saves cleanup time.

Ingredients

What you will need to make Texas Sheet Cake Cookies.

Scroll down to printable recipe for exact ingredient quantities.

• Eggs - I use 2 large eggs in this cookie dough.
• Cake Mix - I used a box of Duncan Hines Devil's Food cake mix for these photos, which has a great intense chocolate flavor, but any brand and any flavor version of chocolate like milk chocolate will work.
• Butter - If using unsalted butter add a pinch of salt - or not.
• Chocolate Frosting - A 16 ounce tub of ready-to-spread chocolate frosting melts beautifully in the microwave! Any store-bought frosting such as Duncan Hines, Betty Crocker or Aldi brand will work. It doesn't have to be dark chocolate frosting, either.
• Pecans - Use toasted pecan pieces or chopped pecans, or try making your own coarsely chopped roasted pecans. Of course, I love to use Alabama products so I'm using Whaley's Pecan Company pecans from Troy, Alabama.

How to make these cookies with a cake mix

Scroll down to the bottom for the printable recipe with detailed instructions.

• Preheat the oven.
• Melt the butter in the microwave at HIGH for 40 seconds. Stir until butter is completely melted. You don't want to get the butter too hot because eggs are added next.
• Beat in the two eggs for 30 seconds before adding the cake mix. This will add a little air in the batter and lighten it up a bit.

• Beat cake mix, melted butter and eggs with an electric hand mixer to form a thick batter for 1 minute.
• Drop spoonfuls of cookie batter onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheets. This recipe will yield 24 cookies. I like to use a small cookie scoop or tiny ice cream scoop to easily measure out exactly the same amount of batter for each cookie.

• Bake the cookies for 8 minutes, they will firm up when cooled.
• Meanwhile, melt the frosting in the microwave. See printable recipe below for times. Stir in the pecans.
• Cool the cookies on the baking sheet 4 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
• Pour or spoon icing over cookies, allowing the icing to drip onto the same parchment paper the cookies were baked on.

Note: If you don’t have a microwave, the tub frosting can spooned into a saucepan and heated on low heat on the stovetop.

Tip: If the icing is too thin, wait a few minutes and it will thicken back up. If it’s too thick, microwave a few more seconds.

Substitutions & Variations

Trade "this" for "that" in this sheet cake cookie recipe.

• Milk chocolate cake mix and milk chocolate tub frosting can be used with same ingredients and procedure for a less intense chocolate flavor and lighter color.
• If using unsalted butter, add a pinch of salt. It's also fine without extra salt because the cake mix has salt in it.
• Stirring in 2 teaspoons vanilla extract to the cookie batter will enhance the chocolate flavor and take away any artificial flavor of a box cake mix.
• Substitute 1/3 cup vegetable or canola oil for the melted butter.
• Love spice? Add a touch of ground cinnamon to the cookie batter for a Mexican hot chocolate variation.
• Make your cookies extra chocolaty and add some chocolate chips to the cookie batter - milk or dark chocolate chips will work.
• If baking with the kids, add some sprinkles or edible glitter for an extra pop of color.

For a fancy Christmas cookie, leave out the chopped pecans in the melted frosting and top the iced chocolate cookies with one large pecan halve on each cookie.

TIP: You can also put the racks of cookies (back on the cooled baking sheets) in the refrigerator to speed up the process of firming up the frosting for 10 minutes. 

Homemade Texas Sheet Cake Frosting

For these cookies, I've used store-bought frosting to make the chocolate icing, but it's really easy to make your own homemade icing for sheet cake cookies:

• 1/2  cup salted butter
• 3 tablespoons milk (any kind)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 1/4 cups powdered confectioners sugar
• 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 3/4 cup pecan pieces or chopped pecans

Melt butter in a medium saucepan; stir in milk and vanilla. Add powdered sugar and cocoa, stirring until mixture is blended and smooth. Stir in pecans.

Helpful Information

Storage Tips

Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube. Be social and share, y'all! Don't forget to sign up with your email so you don’t miss a single post on my Southern shortcut recipes!

If you make this recipe I'd love to see it! Tag me on social media with #gritsandgouda or @gritsandgouda. Leave a comment below the printable recipe if you have questions or tell me how you liked the recipe. Don't forget to rate it 5 stars if you love it!

Nutrition analysis on GritsAndGouda.com recipes are mostly calculated on an online nutrition calculator. I am not a dietitian and nutritional information is an estimate and can vary based on products used.