Gooey butter cake facts for kids
A slice of Gooey butter cake, garnished with powdered sugar and raspberries.
|
|
| Type | Cake |
|---|---|
| Place of origin | United States |
| Region or state | St. Louis, Missouri |
| Main ingredients | Wheat flour, butter, sugar, eggs, powdered sugar, cream cheese |
Gooey butter cake is a special kind of cake that comes from St. Louis, Missouri, in the United States. It's a flat, rich cake, usually about an inch thick. It's made with flour, butter, sugar, and eggs. After baking, it's often sprinkled with powdered sugar.
Even though it's sweet and rich, gooey butter cake is firm enough to be cut into squares, much like a brownie. People usually eat it as a coffee cake with a drink, rather than as a fancy dessert. There are two main types of this cake. The first is the original St. Louis bakers' version, which started in the 1930s. The second is a homemade version that uses cream cheese and a store-bought yellow cake mix.
The St. Louis tourism website even shares a recipe for the cream cheese version. They call it one of St. Louis's "quirky foods." This recipe uses a bottom layer of butter and yellow cake batter. The top layer is made with eggs, cream cheese, and sometimes almond extract. It tastes best when eaten soon after it's baked, either warm or at room temperature.
The cream cheese version is also known as "Ooey Gooey butter cake" or sometimes "chess cake." It's a simpler way to make the cake at home. However, bakeries in St. Louis, like those at Schnucks and Dierbergs grocery stores, use a different recipe for the original cake. Their recipe uses corn syrup, sugar, and powdered eggs, but no cake mix or cream cheese.
How Did Gooey Butter Cake Start?
There are a few stories about how gooey butter cake was first made. Many believe it was created by accident in the 1930s. A baker in St. Louis, who was of German American heritage, was trying to make a regular cake. But he supposedly mixed up the amounts of butter and flour.
John Hoffman owned the bakery where this mistake happened. His bakery used two kinds of butter "smears." One was for deep butter coffee cakes. The other, a gooey butter, was used to make things like Danish rolls and stollens sticky. This way, toppings like coconut, hazelnuts, or peanuts would stick.
A new baker was supposed to make deep butter cakes. But he accidentally used the gooey butter smear instead. The mistake wasn't noticed until the cakes were almost ready to bake. Instead of throwing them away, Mr. Hoffman decided to bake them anyway. This happened during the Great Depression, a time when food supplies were limited. Surprisingly, the new cake sold very well! Soon, other bakers in St. Louis started making and selling them too.
Another St. Louis baker, Fred Heimburger, also remembers the cake appearing in the 1930s. He saw it as a happy accident that became a local favorite. Mr. Heimburger tried to share gooey butter cake with other bakers when he traveled. They liked the taste, but their customers didn't want to buy it. People thought it looked like a mistake, calling it a "flat gooey mess." Because of this, gooey butter cake remained a special treat mostly found in the St. Louis area for many years.
The cake became more famous outside St. Louis thanks to celebrity chef Paula Deen. She helped popularize it, often calling it "ooey gooey butter cake."
Where Can You Find Gooey Butter Cake?
Today, you can find fresh or boxed gooey butter cakes in many grocery stores around St. Louis. Haas Baking used to sell a well-known packaged version. Its box showed a fun picture of Charles Lindbergh's plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, flying over downtown St. Louis and the Gateway Arch.
Many independent and family-owned bakeries still make gooey butter cakes. These bakeries carry on a tradition from a time when there were many neighborhood bakeries in St. Louis. These were often run by German and Austrian American families in areas like Dutchtown, Bevo Mill, and Tower Grove.
Now, some businesses focus only on making different flavors of gooey butter cake. They sell them in coffee shops, directly to customers, or even ship them.
Panera Bread Company, which started as St. Louis Bread Company, makes a Danish with a gooey butter filling for the St. Louis area. Also, Walgreens stores sometimes sell individual, wrapped slices of St. Louis gooey butter cake as a snack.
Gooey butter cake is now available in many places outside St. Louis. For a while, Walmart sold a version called Paula Deen Baked Goods Original Gooey Butter Cake. While Walmart still sells a gooey butter cake, they no longer sell the Paula Deen brand.
This sweet treat, which started as a breakfast pastry, can now even be found on menus in fancy restaurants across the Midwest and even on the West Coast.
