Sep. 4: A recipe what gots butter in it

It’s Day #4 of our September Blog Challenge and Sherilee’s over there sharing some delectable fancy-ass recipe. I decided to share a fancy-ass recipe too, admittedly LESS fancy-ass, and without apologies because Sherilee and I are not having a fancy-ass contest, right? RIGHT.

A few weeks ago “butter cake” was mentioned in my Facebook feed by at least three different people. I knew I had to investigate, because BUTTER is good and CAKE is also good but you could say that about fruitcake too and we all know how that abomination ended. Here’s what I found out about butter cake origins.

California Pizza Kitchen has a type of butter cake on its dessert menu, and the one time I tried it I thought it was pretty good. It wasn’t gooey, though, and according to the Wikipedia description, butter cake is more accurately called *gooey* butter cake.

GOOEY, like BUTTER and CAKE, is gooooood. This is a recipe for fruitcake the tastebuds!

And this is how dedicated I am to posting every day this month: I actually made this cake last night, just for the blog. For you, I mean. (And also me, because I did get to taste this nummy thing. I took one bite and then grabbed the whole pan and retreated to a corner, inhaling the cake while fighting off family members with my fork. If I hadn’t been sitting there next to my KitchenAid mixer, by the air conditioning vent, passersby might have thought I was a cave-woman. Instead they just thought, “Oink, Jen. Very oink.”)

I didn’t have to look very hard for a recipe. In fact, I stopped soon after I started because the first few I found were 1) almost identical, and 2) incredibly easy. Here’s the recipe I used, after some Jen tweaks:

St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake

• 1 box yellow cake mix with pudding in the mix
• 4 extra-large eggs (2 for each layer of cake)
• ½ cup butter
• ½ tsp. vanilla extract
• 8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
• 3 cups confectioner’s sugar + a little extra for powdering the cake when cool
• Non-stick spray

This cake has two separate layers. First, the cake-y layer:

1. Put cake mix into a mixing bowl. DO NOT FOLLOW BAKING INSTRUCTIONS ON THE CAKE BOX!
2. Add 2 extra-large eggs to bowl
3. Add ½ cup (1 stick) melted butter to bowl
4. Add ½ teaspoon vanilla extract to bowl
5. Mix until smooth, using a stand or hand mixer. The batter will be thicker than a typical cake batter, but not as thick as cookie dough.
6. Grease a 9x13 pan and spread cake batter evenly. Set aside.

You can rinse off the beaters and bowl to use again to prepare the gooey layer:

1. Add the softened cream cheese to bowl
2. Add 3 cups confectioner’s sugar to bowl
3. Add 2 extra-large eggs to bowl
4. Mix until smooth. This batter will be more liquid-y than the first layer. You might even call this layer “gooey.” (Duh.)
5. Spread the gooey mixture smoothly over the bottom layer in the 9x13 pan

Bake at 350° for 40-45 minutes or until the top is lightly browned. The edges will brown more quickly and that’s okay (they’ll be totally chewy and yummy). The top does not harden, so toothpick testing won’t help.

Remove cake from oven and cool on a baking rack for at least an hour before serving. Sprinkle with powdered sugar. Slice servings like you would brownies.

I don’t normally go for the cake mix recipes, but I’m glad I made the exception for this one. Everyone in our house enjoyed it last night, once I decided to share. I recommend drinking a big glass of milk with a piece of this cake. Or serve it with vanilla ice cream! That’s a much better idea!

I almost forgot the most amazing part:

I TOOK PICTURES! I never remember to take pictures when I bake!

Note the top is cracked. It’s ‘posed to be like that. 
The cake absolutely could not contain its deliciousness and it burst forth.

Here’s what it looked like before I shoved it all up in my mouf.

If you’re a blogger and want to do our blog challenge with us, let me know and I’ll send you our list! Otherwise, tune in here (and on Sherilee’s happy little blog) every day in September!