Gooey Butter Cake + Chicken Pot Pie - No. 269
For snow day baking, January cravings, or just nostalgia. Plus it’s National Pie Day!
AS I LOOKED OUT THE WINDOW at eight inches of snow last week, I was reminded of Covid and the project baking we all took on to get through that strange time.
I wasn’t sure if I was experiencing a Covid flashback, but something inside of me craved Gooey Butter Cake, a recipe I hadn’t thought about in years. When four days later the snow hadn’t budged and neither had my desire for Gooey Butter Cake, well, I gave in.
How fortuitous that I had everything in the house to bake this old-fashioned recipe born 100 years ago in the American Midwest.
The signature dessert of St. Louis, Gooey Butter Cake is what the name suggests - a wonderfully gooey cake that doesn't quite set when baked.
Cake mix versions of gooey butter cake call for cream cheese and a load of powdered sugar. They make my teeth ache just to look at them. But St. Louis natives know the original recipe was once made from scratch using yeast in the crust.
But is the original from St. Louis? Or was this cake just a German kuchen (cake) of the early 20th century, and baked and sold in German bakeries that dotted the Midwest and other big cities? St. Louis likes to say the cake originated there in the 1930s, and the stories go that a baker was in a hurry and left out a key ingredient or that the baker intentionally was experimenting to create something new. But what resulted cannot be disputed - a wildly popular gooey butter cake.
Marjorie Child Evans, a cooking teacher with a school in Joplin, Missouri, located in the southwestern corner of the state, was demonstrating how to make butter cakes - or butter kuchen - in the 1920s. Kuchen, affectionately called kucha, are a part of the German baking heritage, both in Germany and with German-Americans. They were well advertised in Missouri and Illinois newspapers throughout the 1950s.
But not too far away, in Louisville, Kentucky, butter kuchen dates to the 1920s with both Heitzman and Plehn's bakeries offering not a gooey but a "runny" butter kuchen. It is possible that the runny butter cake and gooey butter cake evolved about the same time, as both Louisville and St. Louis were cities with strong German populations and a wealth of bakeries.
When I was researching my book American Cake I spoke with Judy Evans, the longtime food editor for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper. She often searched for the origin of this cake but turned up nothing. "I don't think anyone knows where gooey butter cake originated,’’ she said. ‘’We've asked around over the years."
Those three words are powerful - gooey butter cake. Butter cake on its own gets my attention, but if it’s gooey, then I’m all ears. Judy Evans shared her recipe with me, and with a few recent tweaks, it’s even gooey-er. I’m not sure that’s a word that would fly by an English teacher, but for January baking, it works.
And as promised, another January craving - chicken pot pie.
This is not only National Pie Day, but it’s pot pie season. So I’ve unlocked my post from two years ago for everyone to read. It shares some secrets to making the best chicken pot pie.
Yes, cook your own chicken and make your own broth - those are paramount - but even if you cheat and used canned stock it’s about not over-thickening the filling, and using the best pie crust you can make or purchase, slicing your favorite veggies, and tossing in that element of surprise - a cardamom pod or two.
That’s what I’ve been cooking. What about you? And do tell if you know the Gooey Butter Cake origin story…
- xo, Anne
THE RECIPES:
Gooey Butter Cake
Here is the Judy Evans St. Louis recipe, very slightly modified. It comes in two parts, the dough and the filling. Both are simple, but they need to be staged timewise. Make the dough first, and then go clean your house if you like to multi task. If the dough is sticky, flour your fingertips so you can press it into the bottom of the pan. And find a warm place in the kitchen for it to rise. The rise time will differ depending on temperature, but allow somewhere between one and two hours for the dough to double. The filling comes together quickly, like making the filling for pie, and in fact, it tastes like a pie filling, which gets me thinking that the gooey butter cake and the transparent pie and Indiana’s sugar cream pie and my Southern chess pie are all cousins, born out of necessity and baking with what you had in the house. Serve warm, and reheat the leftovers!
Makes: 16 servings
Cake/Crust:
1/4 cup whole milk
2 1/4 teaspoons (1 package) active dry yeast
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
1 3/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour (sift before measuring)
Soft butter for prepping the pans
Filling:
1 1/2 sticks (6 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup light corn syrup
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1/4 cup whole milk, at room temperature
1 cup sifted cake flour or soft all-purpose flour (not King Arthur, sift before measuring)
Powdered sugar, for dusting the cake
For the cake/crust, place the milk in a small saucepan over medium heat for about 1 minute, or in the microwave oven on low power for 45 seconds, and heat until the milk is 100ºF. Sprinkle the yeast over the milk, and stir to dissolve. Set aside.
Place the butter, sugar, and salt in a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the egg, and beat until incorporated. Stop the mixer, and scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the flour alternately with the yeast and milk mixture, beginning and ending with the flour. When all the flour has been added, blend on low speed until the dough is smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes.
Lightly rub butter into the bottom of two 8-inch square pans or one 9-by 13-inch pan. Divide the dough in half - if using two pans - and press one half into the bottom of each pan. Or press all the dough in the bottom of the larger pan. Cover loosely, and place in a warm place to rise until nearly doubled, about 2 hours.
When the dough has nearly finished rising, make the filling. Place the butter, sugar, salt, and corn syrup in a large mixing bowl. Beat on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Scrape down the bowl and add the vanilla and 1 egg. Beat on medium speed until combined, then add the second egg. Add the milk and half of the flour, beating until combined. Add the rest of the flour, and beat until smooth. Set aside.
Place a rack in the center of the oven, and preheat the oven to 350ºF. Pour the
filling over the risen dough. Place the pan/pans in the oven.
Bake the cake until the top is golden brown, about 25 to 30 minutes. Remove from the oven, and let cool 20 minutes. Dust with powdered sugar, slice, and serve warm.
My grandmother worked in a German bakery in Philadelphia and I know they sold Butter cake and my parents who grew up in the 30s and 40s talked about the delicious butter cake from their youth. Philly and PA had a huge German immigrant population in the late 1800s and early 1900s, for example the Pennsylvania “Dutch” that I suspect Philadelphians were eating butter cake before people in St. Louis. Can’t wait to try your recipe!
Anne, How do I get out of the substack authorship? My grandson clicked on the start writing and now I seem to have a substack that I do not need. Any ideas of how to delete. Little fingers on my keyboard sometimes make me a little annoyed!