A sheet cake is a convenient alternative instead of a tiered creation when you have to serve a lot of people or the event is casual. These cakes have developed an undeserved reputation of being boring and flat. You can still have a delectable layer cake by baking several thinner cakes, filling and stacking them rather than attempting to torte a single cake.

Many professional chefs bake several thin layers on baking trays with a one inch lip.

If you wish to try this technique make sure you use parchment and properly prepared pans to prevent sticking. Also check your cakes frequently during the baking process because thinner cakes can dry out very quickly. Sheet cakes are more stable if they are completely chilled or even frozen before attempting to stack them together.

Standard sizes for sheet cakes are:

• Quarter sheet cake which is nine inches x twelve inches or nine inches x thirteen inches
• Half sheet cake which is eleven inches x fifteen inches
• Full sheet cake which is eighteen inches x twenty four inches

Many home bakers will simply make a couple smaller cakes and put them together to achieve a very large sheet cake cake because home ovens are often too narrow to accommodate the larger pans. Sheet cakes can be decorated using the same methods used on round or tiered cakes. These long wide flat cakes are perfect for designs that require a great deal of writing or a picture transferred onto edible rice paper.

Most people do not know that they can turn their home printer into a tool that can print perfect edible images of family, landscapes, airplanes and even super heroes.

This type of cool cake decorating accent seems like it should be done on an expensive machine rather than your ninety dollar HP printer. Obviously you need to use edible paper or sugar paper which can be found at most craft stores and cartridges of edible ink (also found at most craft stores or online).

Simply make your cake in whatever size (or shape) you need and ice it or cover it with fondant. Then clean your printer of regular ink by running some paper through after changing the cartridges. This will purge whatever ink might be left in the printer. Then you simply pick the picture you want to put on your cake and print it off. Attach it to your cake with a little buttercream or simply press it on top. Simple and gorgeous. You can pipe a lovely border around the edges of the paper to hide them so that the picture looks like it is imprinted directly onto the icing. This is a great solution when you need a specific image on your cake and you do not yet have the skill to pipe it yourself.