gooey butter cake

out of the blue the other day, seb asked me to make gooey butter cake.

now, seb almost never asks me to make desserts (much to my dismay, but also much to my benefit) and when he does it is almost always a request for applecake, a favorite dessert his mother made. so naturally, as soon as he asked for this, i was more than willing to comply.

i had never made gooey butter cake, and to my recollection had never even eaten it before, though i had heard of it plenty of times. i found 2 recipes in my collection, one by paula deen and one by seb's mom. they were practically identical, and therefore, both almost identically shocking.

it is not every day i plan to make a dessert that calls for an entire pound of powdered sugar, and that's ON TOP of the sugar in the cake mix the recipe also calls for. a cake mix, 4 eggs, 8 oz of cream cheese, a pound of sugar, and then the only item in which the two recipes differed, paula's called for 2 sticks of butter while seb's mom only used one.

i used the recipe seb's mom had. normally if i am going to make a dessert (especially at seb's request) i am inclined to splurge to make the richest, most flavorful version, because even though i love to cook and bake, i almost never make desserts just for the two of us at home. and if i'm making it for someone else, of course i want it to be as good as possible. but faced with the ingredient list so far, i chose to exercise a little restraint.

after having tried it, it is the sort of thing that to me really must be eaten in moderation. even if i wanted to, i'm not sure i could handle much of something that rich. fortunately for me, it's also the kind of dessert i probably would only like fresh but not much left over, and as seb is doing a particularly hard month at work, i plan to pack it up in containers and send it all with him.

maybe this is just the thing to finally help him gain a couple pounds!