Week 21: Gooey Butter Cake

This cake was sneaky. When it was tasted after cooling for 30 minutes or so, it was good. But a few hours later, oh my, it was amazing. In full disclosure, I finished the last bits of it days later by eating the filling out of the crust like a rabid dog. It was that good.

Let’s start from the beginning. A couple weeks ago, I really needed to catch up on cakes. I had skipped a few weeks here and there due to travel, illness, etc. So I invited my friend, Joey, over to help me bake not one, but two cakes.

Joey actually goes by “Joe”, but he is my boyfriend Chris’ cousin, thereby making him my cousin by proxy. And since he’s my cousin by proxy, I’d like to think I was grandfathered into the privilege of calling him “Joey”. Joey is also a gifted writer and a writing teacher, so I’m a little bit paranoid he’s reading this and finding errors in grammar. Eeek!

So we set out to bake Gooey Butter Cake and Thunder Cake. This post covers the Gooey Butter Cake. I found the recipe on The Huffington Post back in January and that’s what we followed without making any intentional changes. (More on that in a second.) I’d never heard of Gooey Butter Cake before, but learned it’s a staple in St. Louis bakeries.

The cake has a crust, so the first step was to make the dough and let it rise while we got to work on our other cake.

We dissolved the yeast into warm water.

In a separate bowl, we creamed together the butter and sugar and then added the egg and vanilla.

Next, we incorporated the flour, milk, salt, and yeast mixture.

Since I don’t own a stand mixer with a dough hook, we did the last bit of mixing by hand before placing the dough in a bowl with a towel on top. It felt very old school Italian, something both Joey and I have an appreciation for. We set it aside for an hour or so to allow it to rise.

Meanwhile, we prepared the gooey butter filling. You can probably tell by what we placed in the bowl that this filling was t0-die-for.

Once that was all mixed up, it was time to spread the risen dough in the 9×13 inch pan.

But first, I had to punch that dough down. This is my favorite part of dough making. I love to throw a good punch.

Then we spread the dough out on the bottom and up the sides of the greased pan.

The greasing part we forgot at first. Well, I forgot and then Joey reminded me, so I gathered the dough out of the pan and he sprayed it a little after the fact. It happens. In full disclosure, I was baking with wine, and I didn’t use a drop in this cake.

We were so excited to spread the filling on top of the crust that we completely forgot to prick the crust dough with a fork. I’m not sure if that step would have propounding impacted the cake, but I just had to mention that. It’s an easy step to forget, especially if you’re baking with wine.

When this cake emerged from the oven, it looked and smelled delightful.

To keep this cake traditional, we covered in a coat of powdered sugar.

Look at this slice! This cake is traditionally served warm or at room temperature. We sampled it when it was warm, and then the next day once it had been refrigerated. Perhaps we don’t have good taste in Gooey Butter Cake, but we both preferred it cold and leftover.

The best part of this cake, as you might imagine, is the filling. The crust turned out a little thick and dry and merely served as a vessel to house the amazing filling. Joe remarked it tasted like the filling found in Momofuku Milk Bar‘s famous Crack Pie. I’ve never tried it, but I am NUTS about Momofuku Milk Bar and have some David Chang-inspired cakes percolating in my imagination. If I were to make this cake again, I’d ditch the fussy dough and simply put the filling in a graham cracker pie crust.

So if you’re interested in trying this recipe for yourself, that is my tip. Make half the filling in this recipe, and bake it in a graham cracker crust.