Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity/He's broken every human law/He breaks the law of gravity - Gooey Butter Cake

Although I don't have a real beef with them, I'm not a big fan of boxed cake mixes. You can easily make a cake from scratch (stay tuned for the easiest and tastiest chocolate cake recipe ever) without much more fuss than from a mix. However, the tried and true St. Louis homestyle gooey butter cake traditionally starts with a cake mix and who am I to argue with STL tradition?

Steve and I are MC'ing the Tenth Life Cat Rescue Trivia Night and Bake Sale tonight and I wanted to bake something to contribute to the sale, despite the fact that my homegrown stuff will be side by side with some fancy bakery goods. Who can turn down gooey butter, right? Well, that's my hope anyway.

Tenth Life Cat Rescue, run by our friend Elizabeth Frick (with her husband Adam),  is a charitable organization that deserves your money! Elizabeth takes in the neediest cases, scouring shelters and answering late night calls, to rescue cats that would otherwise often be euthanized. She helps them get the surgeries or medications they need, gets them into tip top health, finds foster homes (she always needs foster homes - the more fosters, the more cats she can save - hint hint!) and eventually gets them adopted to loving forever homes. She has a shoestring budget and can always use donations! There is an easy Paypal button on the website!

At any rate, for the bake sale I decided on two plain gooey butters and two of the chocolate variety. Both of the chocolate ones have chocolate crusts, but one also has chocolate filling. They look like they taste good, anyway.

The recipe for gooey butter is seriously simple. This recipe makes one 9x13 or two 8x8s. You need: One cake mix (flavor combos are only limited to your imagination, but traditional is a yellow cake), one stick of butter or margarine, three eggs, 8 oz. cream cheese, one teaspoon vanilla, and four cups of powdered sugar. To make: Preheat oven to 350F. Mix cake mix, butter and one egg. When well blended, smoosh mixture into the greased (or sprayed) pan, going up about one inch on the side. For the filling, beat the softened cream cheese with two eggs and the vanilla until smooth, then add the four cups of powdered sugar and continue beating till well mixed and smooth, about two minutes. (For the chocolate filling, I simply added in about a quarter cup of cocoa [for an 8x8 cake].) Pour the filling on top of the crust mixture and place in the over for about 20-25 minutes. You need to keep a close eye on the cake so that it doesn't get too browned. It's really to your taste as to how browned you let the top get. Obviously the less browned it is, the more gooey the cake. After taking out of the oven, sprinkle with some powdered sugar and you are done.