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The regional table / Missouri

St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake

Published September 23, 2026 · Missouri

A pale golden sheet cake cut into squares, dusted with powdered sugar, the cut faces showing a thin base under a dense wet layer
Two layers, not one. The base should be a quarter inch of soft bread; everything above it should look like it is not quite finished. AI-generated illustration.
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If the middle of your cake looks done, you have baked something else.

The oldest hard record of this cake I could find is a lawsuit. Dickson v. National Supermarkets, Inc., 728 S.W.2d 736, decided by the Missouri Court of Appeals on 5 May 1987, opens: "Personal injury-products liability action for injuries received by respondents (plaintiffs) as a result of ingesting 'gooey butter cake' purchased from appellant (National)." The court put the name in quotation marks, which tells you something about how local it still was, and the cake in that case came from a grocery bakery rather than a restaurant, which tells you where it lived. Beyond that the archives are quiet in a way worth reporting: the phrase does not appear anywhere in the State Historical Society of Missouri's digital collections, across all twenty-nine of them, including the complete run of the Missouri Historical Review, and it does not appear anywhere in Nebraska's newspaper archive either. This is a twentieth-century bakery cake with no old book behind it, and the quantities below are this site's own, worked out for this page.

There are two cakes wearing this name and the record is one-sided about which one got into print. Every published recipe I could reach is the cream cheese one, and it is a cake-mix dessert: the Houston Home Journal of 1 July 1992 prints it as a box of yellow cake mix, a stick of melted butter and an egg pressed into a 9 by 13 pan, topped with eight ounces of cream cheese, a box of powdered sugar and two eggs, baked at 350°F for 30 minutes. Paula Deen's pumpkin version of the same construction ran in Georgia papers in 2005, 2007 and 2008, a red velvet one in 2018, and a bare cake-mix version was still running in June 2025. The other cake — the one St. Louis bakeries sell, a thin yeast-raised base under a topping loosened with corn syrup — is the older shape and the one this recipe follows, but I could not put my hands on a documented formula for it in any open archive, and I am not going to invent a bakery to hang it on. What the German bakery context does support is the surroundings: the State Historical Society's German Experience in St. Louis collection holds a portrait of James Grunzinger, owner of Grunzinger's Bakeries, born in St. Louis and filed under German Americans, and its Folklore and Folklife collection holds a Missouri German community recipe book, Senior citizens present—authentic German recipes, old time remedies, historical sketches of Freistatt (Freistatt, Mo.: Hal Schimke Litho, 1981), full of Kuchen — Brauner Kaffeekuchen, Rahm Kuchen, Pflaumen Kuchen, a Zwetschenkuchen copied out of Die Rundschau of Mittwoch, den 16 Juli 1919, and Blitzkuchen baked fifty and sixty to a wedding. There is no gooey butter cake in it.

Why this version works

The base is bread, not cake. A yeast dough pressed thin gives you a quarter inch of soft, barely sweet crumb that holds the topping up and tastes of butter and milk rather than sugar. Build the base from a cake mix and you get sweet under sweet, which is the single biggest difference between the bakery cake and the potluck one.

Corn syrup keeps the middle liquid. Granulated sugar cooked with butter and eggs and then cooled will firm up and go slightly grainy. A third of a cup of light corn syrup in the topping interferes with that: the goo stays glossy and spoonable at room temperature a day later instead of setting into a fudge layer. It is the only ingredient in this cake doing a job you cannot see.

Underbaking is the recipe, not a risk. The cake is done when the outer two inches have set and puffed and the middle four still shudder when you knock the pan. A skewer will come out wet and should. Carryover heat in a heavy pan finishes the middle as it cools; bake until a skewer is clean and you have a butter sponge with no gooey in it.

It must cool completely before it is cut. Warm, the topping is soup and runs off the base. At room temperature it sets to the texture it will keep. Two hours in the pan, undisturbed, then powdered sugar and a knife — and the powdered sugar goes on only at the end, because on a warm cake it dissolves and disappears.

Ingredient notes

Flour: All-purpose in both parts, 2½ cups in the dough and a scant cup and a quarter in the topping. The topping flour is what stops the whole thing from being a custard; measure it by spooning into the cup and leveling, because a heavy hand here is the difference between gooey and cakey.

Butter: Eighteen tablespoons across the whole cake, six in the dough and twelve in the topping. Unsalted, so you control the quarter teaspoon of salt in each part. This is a butter cake in the literal sense and there is no version of it that works with less.

Corn syrup: Light corn syrup, a third of a cup. Golden syrup works and brings a faint caramel note; honey does not, because it browns too fast at the edges and its flavor takes the cake over. If you have neither, the cake will still be good and will set firmer than it should.

Yeast and milk: A single packet of instant yeast in three-quarters of a cup of milk warmed to about 110°F. Instant needs no proofing but a minute in the warm milk does no harm. The dough is enriched and slow; if your kitchen is cold, give the rise ninety minutes rather than the hour.

Step by step

  1. Make the dough. Warm the milk to about 110°F and stir in the yeast. Beat the 6 tablespoons of soft butter with the ¼ cup sugar, add the egg, then the milk, then the 2½ cups flour and ¼ teaspoon salt. Mix to a soft, slightly sticky dough — a minute by hand is enough.
  2. Rise. Cover and leave in a warm place until doubled, 60 to 90 minutes. It will not rise as vigorously as a bread dough; look for visibly puffed rather than dramatic.
  3. Press into the pan. Butter a 9 by 13 pan. Press the dough over the bottom and about half an inch up the sides with floured fingers, working it right into the corners. The layer will look too thin. It is not.
  4. Make the goo. Beat the 12 tablespoons of butter with the 1½ cups sugar until creamy, beat in the egg, then the corn syrup, water and vanilla. Add the flour and salt and mix just until smooth; it should be a thick, pourable batter.
  5. Top and bake. Spoon the topping over the dough and spread it gently to the edges without tearing the base. Bake at 350°F for 35 to 40 minutes, until the edges are golden and set and the center four inches still wobble as one piece when the pan is nudged.
    Pale butter topping spread over a thin yeast dough base in a rectangular pan
    Spread the topping gently to the edges without tearing the thin dough base. AI-generated illustration.
  6. Cool, then sugar. Cool completely in the pan on a rack, at least 2 hours. Dust heavily with powdered sugar and cut into squares. Do not refrigerate before cutting.
If the middle sank into a crater and stayed wet under the surface, the topping was overbeaten and full of air that collapsed — mix it only until smooth next time, and serve this one in spoonfuls over ice cream, where nobody will mind. If the whole thing came out cakey and dry, it stayed in too long: bake to the wobble, not to the skewer, and start checking at 33 minutes. A topping that slid off the base in the oven means the dough was pressed too thin at one end or the topping went on while the dough was still cold and stiff; let the dough sit 10 minutes at room temperature before topping.

Storage and make-ahead

Covered at room temperature the cake keeps 3 days and is better on the second. Refrigeration firms the goo into fudge and dulls the butter; if the kitchen is hot enough to force it, take the cake out an hour before serving.

It freezes well cut into squares, wrapped individually, for 2 months. Thaw at room temperature and re-dust with powdered sugar, which the freezer always takes off.

What to serve with it

Black coffee, and nothing else on the plate. This is a coffee cake in the strict sense — a bakery item sold by the square to be eaten standing up in the morning — and anything creamy alongside it fights the topping. If it has to be dessert, a plain scoop of vanilla and a spoonful of the goo from the middle of the pan.

A pale golden sheet cake cut into squares, dusted with powdered sugar, the cut faces showing a thin base under a dense wet layer

From the recipe box / Missouri

St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake

A thin yeast-raised coffee cake base under a topping of butter, sugar and corn syrup that sets soft and stays soft, baked until the edges are firm and the middle still moves.

Prep
25 min
Cook
40 min
Total
3 hr 45 min
Serves
12
Calories
470 per serving

Ingredients

Scale

Instructions

  1. Stir the yeast into the warm milk. Beat the 6 tablespoons butter with the ¼ cup sugar, add one egg, the milk, then the 2½ cups flour and ¼ teaspoon salt to a soft dough.
  2. Cover and rise until doubled, 60 to 90 minutes.
  3. Press the dough over the bottom and ½ inch up the sides of a buttered 9 by 13 pan.
  4. Beat the 12 tablespoons butter with the 1½ cups sugar, then the second egg, corn syrup, water and vanilla; mix in the 1¼ cups flour and remaining ¼ teaspoon salt just until smooth.
  5. Spread the topping gently over the dough and bake at 350°F for 35 to 40 minutes, until the edges are set and the center still wobbles.
  6. Cool completely in the pan, at least 2 hours, then dust with powdered sugar and cut.

Nutrition

Fat19 g (11 g saturated)
Sodium210 mg
Protein6 g
Serving1 square, one twelfth of the pan
Calories470
Cholesterol75 mg
Carbohydrates69 g (39 g sugar, 1 g fiber)

Nutrition is an estimate calculated from the listed ingredients and is provided as a courtesy, not as dietary advice.

Questions readers ask

What if I have no corn syrup?

Golden syrup is the best substitute. Without either, increase the water by a tablespoon and accept that the goo will set firmer and slightly grainy as it cools — still good, just less gooey.

How do I know it is baked enough?

By the edges and the wobble, not by a skewer. The outer two inches should be risen, golden and firm to a fingertip; the middle should move as a single mass when you nudge the pan, like a barely set custard. If the center ripples in waves, give it 5 more minutes.

Is this the same as the cream cheese version?

No, and it is worth being clear about it. The cream cheese cake is a cake mix pressed into a pan under a beaten mixture of cream cheese, powdered sugar and eggs; it is the version that got into newspapers from 1992 onward and travelled nationally. This one is a yeast dough under a butter-and-corn-syrup topping. They share a name and very little else.

Can I use a cake mix for the base to save time?

You can, and you will have made the other cake. If time is the problem, make the dough the night before and let it rise slowly in the fridge; press it into the pan cold and give it 20 minutes on the counter before topping.