Gooey Butter Cookies

St. Louis’ famous mistake lives on with these cookies that are ready in a snap.

Nobody can resist gooey butter cookies, especially when pumpkin and chocolate variations are paired with vanilla.

The gooey butter cake is the world’s most delicious mistake. Yet, a lot of people outside the St. Louis area have never heard of such a thing. Well, pull up a chair, pour yourself a cup of coffee, and listen to the tale.

Like most stories that go way back, there are many versions to this one, but most agree that a baker screwed up a coffee cake recipe in south St. Louis. However, what German bakery this happened at and during which decade (1930s or 1940s) is debated. I think most St. Louisans are content to accept it originated here and the rest is, well, in the details.

This square little cake, when made from scratch, starts with a yeast dough and also includes butter and sugar, followed by the best part—the gooey topping—made with corn syrup, more sugar and more butter. A lot of recipes now use cream cheese and yellow cake mix that purists poo-poo, but there’s nothing wrong with this recipe, especially if it gets a less-than-confident baker in the kitchen and a delicious taste of gooey butter cake in his or her life.

A square of gooey butter cake is a little like a vanilla brownie but with a softer middle, and the top of the cake is dusted with confectioners’ sugar. To the uninitiated, the sweet meter goes way off the chart, but if you grew up on the cake (as I did), there’s no problem.

Most bakeries in St. Louis, including those at local grocery chains, always have gooey butter cake in the case. If you want to go old school, Federhofer’s Bakery in south St. Louis County, Missouri Baking Company on “The Hill” (St. Louis' Italian neighborhood) or McArthur’s Bakery also in south St. Louis County, have the classic gooey butter and all are wonderful. I also liked a company called Gooey Louie that sadly has gone out of business, but they had different gooey butter flavors. Park Avenue Coffee, a cool coffeehouse in historical Lafayette Square and a few other city locations, sells gooey butter made by Ann & Allen Baking Company, which boasts a total of 73 flavors.

The cake recipe is easy to make for home cooks, but these cookies are ridiculously simple, quick, and completely satisfying. You can stick with the traditional vanilla flavor or experiment a bit (chocolate and pumpkin were very tasty).

We're kicking off our month of holiday cookie recipes with these tasty bites. What’s great about these cookies, other than their simplicity, is they are not as sweet as gooey butter cake, but still deliver on the nostalgic flavors of the classic dessert. So, if you’ve ever had gooey butter cake and thought “eh, too sweet for me,” give these a try. Naturally, these cookies would be great any time of year, but I think they provide a nice balance to a tray of holiday sweets. You don’t even need a mixer for these. You will, however, want a glass of cold milk to accompany these.

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Farm fresh ideas

Deborah Patterson's experience as a busy home cook and passionate gardener translates into developing products for her popular general store.

Deborah Patterson, owner of Patterson Family Farms General Store & Boutique (Photo courtesy Deborah Patterson)

Even a cold drizzle of rain couldn’t dampen the joy of making s’mores around the warming fire pit that was in front of Patterson Family Farms General Store & Boutique. It was a Christmas Open House at the store, but I was here to meet Deborah Patterson who owns this small business in Wildwood, Missouri. Walking past the fire pit and winter greens potted in cheerful red, white, and black gingham containers, I found Deborah taking a break from the busy morning of shoppers while her husband—whom she refers to as Farmer Tim—helped at the cash register.

The store, which has been in business since 2018, expanded this summer when the Miller Haus coffee bar—a business with which they shared the current space —closed. Deborah has curated not only seasonal produce from their family farm, but Missouri-made food and gift items. There’s a case with meat, cheese, eggs, and more. Pantry items include commercial brands, as well as specialty items.

Like her original crop of pumpkins that quickly spread, her path to the general store grew after the family purchased a farm in 2011. Deborah seeing the farm was “love at first sight,” and she and her youngest son soon started a garden. They planted pumpkin, squash, tomatoes, and “a few other things,” and added variety each year. Deborah’s passion for gardening grew along with the vegetables. To follow that passion, as well as to take some time to re-evaluate her life, she resigned from her full-time job in commercial real estate.

Now Deborah says she’s on a mission to share her passion about growing and eating healthy food, as well as developing her business, with others.

With a family and the store to care for, Deborah still cooks at least six times a week. She learned to cook (with supervision) when she was 6 but started cooking for her family of five people every day when she was about 12 years old.

Deborah retains strong food memories of childhood, including enjoying her Mom’s pot roast with brown rice on Sunday after church and vegetable soup that was served every Friday during winter.

“We all did sports and Mom would make it (soup) so it would be there when we needed it,” she said.

With family roots in southern Missouri and Texas, she also grew up eating chalupa, black-eyed peas, collard greens, and cornbread.

As a busy mom and business owner, Deborah knows home cooks have big responsibilities. “There can be a challenge with time for any career mom/wife, so I would say time would be my biggest issue.”

Orzo with shrimp and spinach can be a quick weeknight supper. (Deborah Reinhardt photo)

But she has a solution for that: Patterson Family Farms meal kits. Neatly arranged colorful paper gift bags are labeled with ingredients needed to cook a from-scratch dinner, like Shrimp and Spinach Orzo Pasta (check out the recipe below), soup (such as hearty vegetable), dessert (s’mores), or appetizer (Deborah’s homemade crab dip). Customers select a meal kit bag, shop for ingredients, and take home a meal to prepare in a snap. (This isn’t a sponsored story, but seriously, what a brilliant marketing idea.)

There also are Thompson Farms dry soup mixes that are great for a busy home cook to have on hand. I recently made the Santa Fe tortilla soup, and it was delicious. It made a huge pot (I froze most of it). Three more varieties are waiting in my pantry at home.

Home cooks have the tasks of “pleasing a number of different palettes, keeping to a budget, and getting dinner to the table quickly,” Deborah says. It would appear this experienced cook has figured out how to accomplish those tasks, and she’s happy to share her inspiration with customers.

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You'll flip over these 3 Thanksgiving leftover recipes

Easy to make and sure to please, these dishes will give your leftovers a makeover. Turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, cranberries, and even pumpkin pie get a new spin after the big holiday.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to Thanksgiving leftovers. The first involves preparing just enough turkey and trimmings to feed those around the table once. It’s carefully calculated and executed with drill team precision. The second doubles whatever recipes are being used to ensure guests are given a plate to take home for the next day and the hosting family has leftovers to enjoy for at least two days following the feast.

Our family fell into that second camp.

Shepherd's pie is a great way to use up those leftover mashed potatoes.

I can’t comprehend not having Thanksgiving leftovers. It just feels weird to me. In recent years when I’ve been a guest at the friend-of-a-friend’s home and went home empty-handed, I made a small Thanksgiving dinner for myself the next day so I could have “leftovers.” Judge me if you must, but I totally understand where this need comes from: Mom and Grandma. (Thank you both.)

Growing up, that turkey carcass was stripped to the bone, and even then, it was thrown into a pot for soup. Here’s how it went down: Day-after-Thanksgiving menu was simply the reheated dishes from the previous day. Somehow, it tasted better. Saturday after Thanksgiving meant a trip downtown to see the elaborate store window decorations, followed by lunch at The Mayfair Hotel (now Magnolia Hotel St. Louis), which meant a “lighter” dinner for us that was usually turkey tetrazzini and salad. By Sunday, the turkey soup was on the stove for lunch next week, and any leftover sides—called “must-goes" by Mom—rounded out a roast beef dinner.

But by far, Mom’s favorite leftover dish was a turkey sandwich with dressing. Not dressing on the side, but sandwiched between the bread without any gravy. She might do a light spread of Durkee sandwich dressing, but only when she was feeling sassy.

And when I found this turkey slider recipe on the Butterball.com website, I knew I had to try this as an homage to Mom. It now is my favorite Thanksgiving leftover recipe for three reasons: It reminds me of Mom; it uses four Thanksgiving leftovers in the refrigerator, and it’s easy to do…really a hack more than a recipe. I used leftover cranberry relish instead of sauce because that’s what we always make for Thanksgiving, but either will provide the balancing sweetness.

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Search the Web for “favorite Thanksgiving sides” and mashed potatoes will come up as No. 1 and with good reason; heavenly mounds of starchy potatoes are whipped into submission with butter, cream and sometimes sour cream or cream cheese (mouth is watering over the keyboard). And probably few sides have as many leftover applications as this one, whether we’re talking about potato doughnuts or savory shepherd’s pie. Because I have another sweet for you, let’s do savory here. Traditional pies use ground lamb, but most Americanized recipes employ ground beef in the recipe. Either will work well.

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As if our politics aren’t enough to divide this nation, we can add pie to the list. According to a 2019 survey by Reader’s Digest, pumpkin pie is the dessert most associated with Thanksgiving, but other pies—like apple and pecan—topped it, depending on what part of the country you live in. Can’t we all just get along and bake three pies (apple, pecan, and pumpkin) for Thanksgiving?

Maybe because I fall in that central part of the U.S. where pumpkin pie is always present, I enjoy a slice (and weirdly enough, because Missouri borders the Southern state of Arkansas, also pecan pie), but it tends to lack appeal the days after Thanksgiving. We often would have at least a third of a pie left over; but then again, Grandma always baked a few varieties of pie, being a true patriot. So, here’s the solution to that problem, a wonderful Betty Crocker recipe that will use up leftover pumpkin pie. It’s so stinking good and ready in just 10 minutes. And who doesn’t want to sip a milkshake while watching a holiday movie?