Gooey butter cake
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eggs, powdered sugar, cream cheese | |
Gooey butter cake is a type of
The St. Louis Convention & Visitors Commission includes a recipe for the cream cheese and commercial yellow cake mix variant cake on its website, calling it "one of St. Louis' popular, quirky foods". The recipe calls for a bottom layer of
The cream cheese variant of the gooey butter cake recipe (also known as "Ooey Gooey butter cake", occasionally "chess cake"), while close enough to the original, is an approximation designed for easier preparation at home.
Origin and popularity
There are several claims to the creation of the cake. The cake was supposedly first made by accident in the 1930s by a St. Louis-area
Another St. Louis baker, Fred Heimburger, also remembers the cake coming on the scene in the 1930s, as a slip up that became a popular hit and local acquired taste. He liked it well enough that Heimburger tried to promote gooey butter cake by taking samples of it with him when he traveled out of St. Louis to visit other bakers in their shops. They liked it, but they could not get their customers to buy it. Their reactions tending to regard it as looking too much like a mistake, and "a flat gooey mess".[7] As such, so it remained as a regional favorite for many decades. Other stories surround the cake's creation; none have been historically verified.
Traditionally served as a breakfast or “coffee cake”, variations of Gooey Butter Cake have become popular, dessert offerings in many restaurants. The first known use of the confection as a dessert was at Clary’s Restaurant in Springfield, Missouri. In 1991, the restaurant first offered a Warm Blueberry Gooey Butter Cake with Vanilla Bean Ice Cream and Blueberry Coulis. It became a signature dessert at the popular eatery.
Availability
Many St. Louis area grocery stores sell fresh or boxed gooey butter cakes. Haas Baking sold a widely distributed, square and packaged version in a box that depicts a colorful, if
Panera Bread Company (original name: St. Louis Bread Company) makes a Danish with a gooey butter filling for the St. Louis market. More recently, Walgreens sells wrapped, individual slices of a version of St. Louis gooey butter cake as a snack alongside muffins, brownies, and cookies.
Gooey butter cake is now widely available outside of the St. Louis area, as Walmart has been marketing a version called Paula Deen Baked Goods Original Gooey Butter Cake. While Walmart still sells a gooey butter cake, they dropped the Paula Deen version.
Gooey butter cake ("butter cake") is also widely popular in German-style bakeries throughout the
Modern versions of this confection, originally sold as a breakfast pastry or "coffee cake", have shown up on upscale restaurant menus across the Midwest and even the West coast.
In popular culture
On the
See also
- Butter cake
- Butterkuchen, the yeasted, German coffeecake that is topped with flecks of butter
- Chess pie, a similar dessert in the form of a pie
- Coffee cake
- Kuchen, the German name for cakes, the coffee cake style which may be similar to the base cake that Gooey butter cake developed from
- Philadelphia Butter Cake, a North Philadelphia cake similar to Gooey Butter cake
- Smearcase, a Baltimore cheesecake served in bar form that resembles Gooey Butter Cake
- Cuisine of St. Louis
References
- ^ Stradley, Linda (May 3, 2015). "Gooey Butter Cake History and Recipe". What's Cooking America.
- ^ "Ooey Gooey Butter Cake". The Sweet Art. Archived from the original on 4 February 2013. Retrieved 3 October 2011.
- ^ "Real St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake". Creative Culinary. 17 March 2012. Retrieved 25 November 2014.
- ISBN 978-0-9638298-1-8.
- ^ "Gooey Butter Cake Recipe and History, How To Make Gooey Butter Cake, Whats Cooking America". whatscookingamerica.net. 3 May 2015. Retrieved 2016-06-21.
- ^ "A St. Louis Original: Ooey-Gooey Butter Cake". 18 February 2017.
- ^ Barry, Ann (April 19, 1989). "A Butter Cake That Sticks to the Gums". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 January 2014.
- ^ "Leave Me in St. Louis". Cooking Channel. Retrieved June 7, 2017.
External links
- Ann Barry (April 19, 1989). "A Butter Cake That Sticks to the Gums". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 31 August 2009. (with recipe)
- Deborah (August 27, 2008). "Paula Deen DID NOT Create Gooey Butter Cake". Slow Travel. Archived from the original on 2013-03-28. Controversy over a television cook laying claim to Gooey butter cake described