The Gooey butter cake is a type of cake traditionally made in St. Louis, Missouri.
It is a flat and dense cake with flour, butter, sugar, and eggs, typically about 0.4 inches high and dusted with powdered sugar, generally served as a type of “coffee cake” and not as a dessert cake.
There are two distinct variations of the cake: the original St. Louis, with MO Bakers’ gooey butter (the recipe that follows) and a cream cheese variant with a ready-made yellow cake mix.
It is believed that the original St. Louis, MO Bakers version originated in the 1930s at John Hoffman’s bakery.
There are different versions of how the cake was created.
The first tells that the cake was accidentally made for the first time by a German-American baker who was trying to make a normal cake batter but reversed the proportions of butter and flour.
Another story tells that there were two types of butter “smears” used in Hoffman’s bakery: a sticky butter and a deep butter (gooey butter and deep butter).
The sticky butter was used as an adhesive for preparations like Danish and stollen. It was spread on the surface, then coconut, hazelnuts, peanuts, etc. were added.
A new baker mixed up the butter. The mistake was discovered only afterward, and instead of throwing them away, Hoffman decided to bake them anyway.
This baking error was made during the Great Depression, which meant that baking ingredient supplies were scarce.
The new cake sold so well that Hoffman continued to bake and sell it, and soon other bakers around St. Louis did the same.
Gooey butter cake is now widely available even outside the St. Louis area, as Walmart marketed a version called “Paula Deen Baked Goods Original Gooey Butter Cake.”
- Difficulty: Easy
- Cost: Cheap
- Rest time: 2 Hours
- Preparation time: 10 Minutes
- Portions: 4People
- Cooking methods: Stovetop, Oven
- Cuisine: American
- Seasonality: All seasons
Ingredients
- 3 oz milk
- 1 cup butter
- 1 tsp baking yeast
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- 3 cups flour
- 3 tbsps corn syrup
- 1 vanilla bean
- to taste salt
Tools
- 1 Baking Pan 9-inch
Steps
Warm the milk (1.5 oz), add the yeast.
Beat the melted butter (3 oz) with sugar (1.5 oz), salt, and one egg.
Add the flour (1.5 cups) in three additions alternating with the milk mixture in two additions.
Spread in the 9-inch pan, cover, and let rest for 2 hours.
Mix the butter (5 oz) with sugar (6.5 oz), a pinch of salt, and corn syrup. Add the vanilla, the other egg, the milk (1.5 oz), and flour (1.25 cups), mix, and spread over the cake.
Bake in the oven at 350°F for 30 minutes.
Once cool, dust with powdered sugar.
If I had to choose a song that represents the recipe, I would choose, “St. Louis Blues”, a 1914 musical composition written by American musician W. C. Handy and I would choose it performed by Bessie Smith, the most popular and talented blues and jazz singer of the 1920s and 1930s.
FAQ (Questions and Answers)
What is the cheese version of the Gooey butter cake?
The sticky butter cake The St. Louis Convention & Visitors Commission includes a recipe with cream cheese and the commercial yellow cake variant on its website, calling it “one of St. Louis’s popular and quirky foods.”
The recipe features a lower layer of butter and yellow cake batter and an upper layer made of eggs, cream cheese, and, in one case, almond extract.
The creamy cheese variant of the gooey butter cake recipe (also known as “Ooey Gooey butter cake“, occasionally “chess cake”), although quite close to the original, is an approximation designed for easier home preparation.
