Tapping a Midwestern classic for New England’s sweetest season.
By Amy Traverso
Feb 22 2022
Maple Gooey Butter Cake
Photo Credit : Styled and Photographed by Liz NeilyThe original gooey butter cake was invented in the 1930s in St. Louis, Missouri. As the story goes, a German baker mistakenly added too much butter to a coffee cake, baked it anyway, and found that the texture was delightful: crisp on top and velvet-soft in the middle.
While the original recipe calls for a yeast-risen dough, later versions simplified the process to the point that many cooks now use cake mix for the base. That’s all well and good, but with five minutes and a few on-hand ingredients, you’ll get something even better: a caramelized base layer with a creamy, ooey-gooey top. Baked in a 9-by-13-inch baking dish, the result more closely resembles bars than cake, but the name sticks.
Now in case you’re wondering why the Yankee food editor would go beyond New England for this recipe, there are three reasons: First, we know that many of you live in other parts of the country, so this may be a familiar dish. Second, it’s simply too delicious to pass up. Finally, and most important, gooey butter cake is even better when made with maple syrup. St. Louis may have invented it, but we perfected it.
Amy Traverso is the senior food editor at Yankee magazine and co-host of the public television series Weekends with Yankee, a coproduction with WGBH. Previously, she was food editor at Boston magazine and an associate food editor at Sunset magazine. Her work has also been published in The Boston Globe, Saveur, and Travel & Leisure, and she has appeared on Hallmark Home & Family, The Martha Stewart Show, Throwdown with Bobby Flay, and Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. Amy is the author of The Apple Lover’s Cookbook, which was a finalist for the Julia Child Award for best first-time author and won an IACP Cookbook Award in the “American” category.
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