Name: Gooey Butter Cake
Cook time: 20 minutes
Total time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Yield: Makes 16 servings
Ingredients: ¼ cup whole milk; 2¼ tsp. (1 package) active dry yeast; 6 Tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature; 3 Tbsp. granulated sugar; ¾ tsp. salt; 1 large egg; 1¾ cups all-purpose flour; Soft butter for prepping the pans; ¾ cup (1½ sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature; 1½ cups granulated sugar; ½ tsp. salt; ¼ cup light corn syrup; 1½ tsp. vanilla extract; 2 large eggs, at room temperature; ¼ cup whole milk, at room temperature; 1 cup cake flour; Confectioners’ sugar for dusting the cake

A Gooey Butter Cake cut into eight pieces on a serving platter with confectioners sugar orange wine and utensils on a...

Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food Styling by Kaitlin Wayne

The signature dessert of St. Louis, this gooey butter cake is exactly what its name suggests: a wonderfully gooey treat that doesn’t quite set when baked. Cake mix and cream cheese versions exist, but locals know that the original was made from scratch using yeast. But is the original from St. Louis? Or was this cake a typical German kuchen (cake) of the early 20th century, baked and sold in the German bakeries that dotted the Midwest? Locals in St. Louis like to say the cake originated there in the 1930s, and the story goes that a baker was in a hurry and left out a key ingredient, or that the baker intentionally experimented to create something new. Judy Evans, who was the longtime food editor for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, often searched for the origin of this cake, but “surprisingly no one takes credit for it.” Here is the recipe that Evans shared each time a reader wanted the most authentic St. Louis recipe.