Thursday, March 17, 2011

Gooey Butter Cake

First of all, I'd like to wish all of my fellow part-Irish homies a Happy Saint Patrick's Day! Slainte! I'm some percentage of Irish, who knows how much, and I just happened to study abroad there as well. Ah, Galway, I miss ya dear.

Alas, I am not bringing you an Irish dessert today. I know, a travesty. Oh well. I made this thing called Gooey Butter Cake this weekend, and I'm still not sure about it.


It is indeed gooey, and it does indeed have a lot of butter. I'm just not sure I am that in love with it. But I took it in to the office, and everyone seemed to like it there. There was not a piece left. That's usually a good sign. Also? I'd never even heard of this stuff before reading about it on Tasty Kitchen. Am I alone in my ignorance, or is it maybe some local thing? I don't know! 

Gooey Butter Cake
  • FOR THE CRUST:
  • 1 package (18.25 Oz. Box) Plain Yellow Cake Mix *
  • 1 stick Unsalted Butter, melted
  • 1 whole Egg
  • _____
  • FOR THE FILLING:
  • 8 ounces, weight Cream Cheese, At Room Temperature
  • 2 whole Eggs
  • 1 teaspoon Pure Vanilla Extract
  • 1 stick Unsalted Butter, melted
  • 3-¾ cups Confectioner's Sugar
Preheat oven to 350°. Prepare crust first. In a large mixing bowl, combine the crust ingredients with a wooden spoon until moist. Transfer to a 13″x9″ ungreased baking pan and spread evenly over the bottom of the pan. Set aside.

Next, prepare the filling. In a large mixing bowl, beat cream cheese with an electric mixer until fluffy. Add the eggs, vanilla, and melted butter, and continue to mix. Next, add the confectioner’s sugar one cup at a time until all sugar is mixed in. Pour filling over the crust, and spread evenly with a spatula.

Bake gooey butter cake for 40-45 minutes until it is browned, but the center is still jiggles when the pan is shaken. Cool for 30 minutes. Sprinkle with additional confectioner’s sugar and serve.

*Much like HowSweetEats on Tasty Kitchen, I also used the My Favorite Yellow Cake from sweetebakes to replace the boxed cake mix in the original recipe. If you want to do the same, just use the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt measurements. Then add in 1/4 cup milk when the Gooey Butter Cake crust is moistened and just about ready to be transferred to the baking dish.

In pictures:


This is the stuff for the bottom crust layer all mixed together. I wished I had used a larger bowl, because I was having to be careful about side spillage.


The crust all pressed into the pan.


I think this is the cream cheese and the eggs. My cream cheese was not quite room temperature, so there ended up being tiny bits of lumps.


Butter and sugar whipped up.


 Ready to head into the oven.


It comes out, with a slight poof to the top.


Then settles down after a half hour.


A piece set out and sprinkled with powdered sugar.

A couple things. This cake is slightly reminiscent of cheesecake, due to the cream cheese. Also, it's better if you refrigerate it if you don't plan to serve it all at once. However, if you do refrigerate it, I recommend you cut the pieces first, because it becomes hard to cut. But if you don't put it in the fridge, it gets a little too gooey. It's a fine balance, see. A fine balance I did not entirely embrace. But if you like it, hey, good for you!

2 comments:

  1. I grew more fond of them over time, but it's not something I'd personally make very often. Everyone else seemed to really like it, though!

    ReplyDelete