St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake
I baked something again! And again, it was to thank Rosie’s vets, who took care of her over Thanksgiving.
A lot has happened since my last post. It’s felt like an extremely long year, where the lows were very low but also gave us a lot of appreciation for the small things in life. Here’s a Thanksgiving recap, in reflection.
June: At the end of the month, Rosie received her last dose of chemo, and had a good negative scan. Two days later, we celebrated by not cancelling our whirlwind 24-hour trip to see Itzy in Chicago. I bought the tickets in November 2023, and originally we had wanted to make a whole weekend out of it, but even if that didn’t happen it was so fun! First time we did anything for ourselves since Rosie’s diagnosis in February. Thanks to Uncdog for babysitting during the intense post-chemo week.
July: With Rosie’s clear scan, we got to go to a wedding and felt okay leaving her with her friend Marc and his parents. It was a very big moment fo rus. Otherwise, we mostly tried to enjoy this year’s very short Middle Child BLT season, despite the scorching summer heat. On one weekend, I ate BLTs 3 days in a row - once with a coworker, and twice when Joe came back to down just to eat them with us. We also went to Royal Izakaya for omakase! Noah asked around for a reservation for my birthday in April, and luckily a colleague generously yielded one to us. It was really fun and unsurprisingly had a very community vibe.
August: Rosie’s 7th gotcha day was mid-August, one week before her followup scan. It was a really meaningful day for me, though it was just an arbitrary milestone I had in my head for her survival. The week leading up, I was a wreck hoping nothing terrible would happen to her so soon before she made it to her birthday. She got to celebrate with a special burger + fries meal at home on the day, and share cake with her friend on the weekend. A week later, her scan showed no visible recurrence again, and we were overjoyed.
September: Since Rosie had good scans, we went to Croatia for 2 whole weeks! The entire second half of the month. My dad took us for his conference, in exchange I had to plan the whole trip. It was very stressful planning it over the summer, not knowing what would happen, and with contingencies for if we were to cancel but they would still go. Ultimately it worked out, and though it was tiring I’m grateful that I was able to spend this time with my parents, and also show them a good time without them having to worry about the stressful parts of vacation. Croatia was absolutely beautiful.
October: A lot of October went by in a blur. Work was a whirlwind when I got back, since I left at a time with a lot of changes. And we were still recovering from 2 weeks of traveling, which in your thirties is… no easy feat to bounce back. We also went to Royal omakase again! Another colleague Noah asked back in April couldn’t give us a reservation, but hit us up at the last minute because she was very pregnant. Don’t have to ask us twice!! We never thought we’d get to go to Royal TWICE in the same year and are very happy to be seat fillers. The second time was even more fun than the first :’)
November: November started off rocky. A bad omen for what was to come…. On November 1, we almost missed a reservation to Zahav when our friends were visiting town. Noah was on call, and I scrambled to find Rosie a sitter. It worked out in the end, and we got to see them for pizza the next day too. Then election day… Rosie must have known something because she had random severe diarrhea. A week later, she was diagnosed with a mass cell tumor in her tail nub, which would have explained the diarrhea and a few other random symptoms. The next week, she threw up and got aspiration pneumonia and spent 2 days in the hospital and a week feeling nauseous and throwing up more. We made the decision to remove the mass, and the surgery happened this past Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, and that brings us to now, Thanksgiving weekend.
Rosie is having a very rough post-op so far. Compared to her last abdominal surgery, it has been very rough. She cried the entire night when the anesthesia was wearing off, and started regurgitating due to her bowels not moving properly after surgery. Of course she aspirated from the throw up AGAIN and spent another 2 days in the ER. And since it was near the anus, she is having incontinence and crying a lot, probably due to anxiety. My poor baby.
We haven’t been able to stop crying either, so that makes 3 of us. Seeing her sad incision it makes me so guilty to put her through another surgery. Logically it made sense - if it’s indeed what’s causing her gastric symptoms, it’s worth removing because this girl loves to eat and not having a good eating experience is the worst thing for her quality of life. But seeing her like this, she doesn’t deserve this pain. I feel so sorry to put her through this. She deserves the best.
If you’re reading this and you know or have ever met Rosie, please keep her in your thoughts and/or prayers, and send good healing energy her way.
So yes that’s why I made treats — partially it’s the only way I know to express my gratitude, partially I wanted to do something to keep busy, partially because I had lower grade matcha I didn’t want to waste. All good reasons.
St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake
This is a St. Louis classic consisting of a cookie bottom and a cheesecakey top, and if you’ve never had just know that it’s meant to be very very very very sweet. But people love it! This is the recipe from the Ritz-Carlton, St. Louis. We used to make these in giant roasting trays, but I’ve scaled it down from the original batch, which called for 12 lb of cake mix.
Pictured are also the matcha version I made, but obviously the OG is sans matcha.
Prep your tray: Double line your 9x13 cake pan by using 2 sheets of parchment paper to cover all sides of your pan, including the bottom twice. This will make it easier to lift and remove.
For the cookie bottom, paddle together until smooth in a stand mixer:
27 oz (2 x 13.5 oz boxes) yellow cake mix
2 eggs
7oz melted butter
(2 Tbsp matcha, sifted)
If it feels like greasy play-doh, congrats, you made it right! Dump the whole thing into your tray, and press it into an even layer with your hands. You can also press down with something flat, like a bowl scraper, so make it more even.
Using the same bowl, paddle together the cheesecake layer:
27 oz cream cheese, softened at room temperature
27 oz confectioner’s sugar - yes I wrote that right
4 eggs
(1.5 Tbsp matcha)
Make sure you scrape the bowl so the mixture is homogenous.
Pour it on top of the cookie layer, and smooth it into an even layer.
Bake it at 300F (275F convection) for ~75-90 minutes, rotating every 30 minutes. It’s done when it’s not jiggly and wet in the center.
It will puff up, and the edges will get a little brown, but that’s just how GBC is. The middle will sink again once it cools.
Cool it in the pan, on a rack, until it’s cool to the touch - this can take a couple of hours. When it’s cool, wrap it and chill it in the fridge overnight.
You cannot cut this when it’s not chilled!
The next day, take it out of the fridge and dislodge it from the edges, and pull straight up using the edges of your parchment. It is very sticky, and you will be glad you double-lined your pan!
You can obviously cut and serve it however you’d like, but imo it’s saner to treat this like candy and cut it into 1.5” squares or similarly-sized little triangles. Some cutting advice, because this mf-er is sticky like no other:
If you have a tall container that fits your knife, fill it with very hot water. If not, you can just run it in the tap.
Before cutting, dip your knife in the hot water for several seconds, and wipe the crud and water off with a dry towel. Do this between every cut.
Before serving, dust with powdered sugar. The cake can sit out for several hours, or be stored in the fridge for several days.
Notes
Yes, this uses cake mix! No, I don’t know how to make it without cake mix. It gives it the distinctly sweet artificial butter flavor, that real ingredients can’t really replicate. Sorry not sorry.
In fact, if we’re getting into specifics, it should really be Gold Medal Brand yellow cake mix. The others just don’t quite have the same texture and most of all, buttery flavor. You can only get this commercially though.
Claire Saffitz’s recipe was whack, and didn’t taste like gooey butter cake. This is what I consider the quintessential GBC, but I could be biased.
Matcha works surprisingly well here, and makes it something more than just tooth-achingly sweet. I’m sure you could do chocolate but I feel like it would change the essence too much?
The proportions here seem a bit too tall vs. the ones from the hotel, so you could probably get away with 75% of this in the 9x13, and a smaller tin of some sort if you have it, and adjust baking time. I don’t mind the tall though - looks more impressive for gifting.
If you’re gifting, you may end up cutting off the tougher edge pieces. A couple of things we used to do with these scraps:
Mix it as chunks into vanilla ice cream! You can make your own or just soften a commercial pint.
Make gooey butter cookies - make your favorite sugar cookie dough, mix in gooey butter scraps, and bake it again!
In both these cases, the flavor and aroma of fake butter surprisingly really does infuse, and it even dilutes the sweetness a bit.