It's Dialed Back, but Still a Lot: Gooey Butter Cake Squares

Well, it's almost March, so I'm finally getting around to finishing my blog posts about holiday cookies! The final recipe I tried from the Los Angeles Times' 2020 collection of holiday cookies was the Gooey Butter Cake Squares by Jess Stephens. I've made a couple of versions of St. Louis gooey butter cakes before, but I've never had the real deal -- so I don't actually know how they are supposed to taste. In any case, Stephens (who is from St. Louis) says that this recipe is quite different from the original, because she dialed down the sugar and dairy and added citrus.

These bars have a cake base underneath a custardy layer. The cake layer is a mixture of flour, sugar, cornstarch, kosher salt, baking powder, baking soda, room temperature butter, an egg, and oil. You press the mixture into the bottom of a parchment-lined pan. Then you spread on the top layer, which is a mixture of softened cream cheese, powdered sugar, vanilla, orange zest, and eggs. You bake the bars until they are golden and have a slightly wobbly center.
I let the bars cool completely before slicing them. The custard layer was nicely set and it cut cleanly. Stephens says these bars are intentionally rich, but each bite was lot of sweetness, a lot of creamy custard, and lot of astringent tang from the cream cheese and orange zest... it was too much for me. I think I would have preferred to have the custard top on a graham cracker base or something crunchy that was more clearly differentiated; the soft cake just blended in and got lost. 

Out of the four LA Times holiday cookies that I made from the 2020 collection (this recipe, alfajores, sumac pucker-doodles, and brown butter-espresso cookies), the alfajores were my favorite, hands down. That's the only recipe I would be likely to make again. 

The reason I waited until January to try these holiday cookie recipes is that I wanted to wait until I was less busy to deal with recipes that didn't include weight measurements for the ingredients. Well, last month, Ben Mims announced that the LA Times would start including metric weights with all of its recipes. Hallelujah! I'll be eagerly awaiting the 2021 holiday cookie feature this December!

Recipe: "Gooey Butter Cake Squares" by Jess Stephens, from the Los Angeles Times. 

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