Minimal ingredients for maximum snacking.
On the unfortunate occasion when there’s not much in my cupboard except for a few pantry staples, I make the most of what little there is by turning to gooey butter cake. My husband hails from St. Louis where gooey butter cake is not just a beloved dessert but an essential part of growing up. He introduced me to the wonders of this simple cake on my first visit to the city, a hot, humid August day nearly a decade ago.
In St. Louis gooey butter cake is everywhere. It’s sold in bakeries, coffee shops, and grocery stores; it arrives at potlucks and many dinner parties. But no one knows exactly where the cake came from. Judy Evans, former Food Editor of the, tells me that the origins of the cake are shrouded in myth: “The story is that it stemmed from an accident,” she tells me. “The baker was making, perhaps, a deep butter cake…and just messed up the proportions and voilà, gooey butter cake was born.
Josh Allen, owner of Companion Bakery in St. Louis, echoes a similar story. “There was a German baker,” he says, ”and there are a handful who have tried to take credit so I don’t know that anyone knows specifically which German bakery it was.” Some food writers, including Leslie F. Miller and Colman Andrews, believe it was the accidental creation of Johnny Hoffman, a baker at St. Louis Pastries Bakery, in the 1940s.
Gooey butter cake traditionally starts with a yeasted crust, which gets filled with a mixture of butter, sugar, eggs, corn syrup, and vanilla., readers frequently wrote in with questions about the cake, requesting recipes from bakeries they loved. “To say ‘constantly’ would be an exaggeration, but not much of one,” Evans chuckles. “There were certain recipes that I knew would be requested a lot, and that was one of them.
Evans says there are two methods for making gooey butter cake. Traditionally, it starts with a yeasted crust, which gets filled with a mixture of butter, sugar, eggs, corn syrup, and vanilla, and baked until just barely set. The result is chewy, rich, and creamy, almost like a vanilla pudding that’s been nestled into a blondie.
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