St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake

Gooey Butter Cake is a rich coffee cake that is loved by St. Louis natives, the Butter Institute of America, and Ben. There are several apocryphal stories regarding its origins, but I'll let you find them on Wikipedia. I found this recipe on Smitten Kitchen and she got it, ironically, from the New York Times. I hadn't really planned to blog this one, but Ben says this is one of the three cakes he will request for his birthday so I thought I'd better record it.

The cake is made in two stages: first you make a sweet bread dough and let it rise, then you make a custard-like topping and bake. If you have a stand mixer I recommend using it. Otherwise you will need a lot of elbow grease for this one.

3 Tablespoons milk at room temperature
2 Tablespoons warm water
1 3/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
Mix yeast into milk and water and let sit for a few minutes, yeast will form little bubbles.

6 tablespoons butter at room temperature
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
Cream together.

1 egg (we've been getting extra large eggs -- recommended)
Beat in to butter and sugar mixture.

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
Alternate adding flour and milk/water/yeast mixture. Continue to stir for around 10 minutes. This is where the elbow grease comes in. Dough will form into a soft and cohesive ball. When done mixing, spread out into a 9 x 13 inch glass baking dish. Let rise at room temperature for 3 hours. Dough should double, but I find it's hard to tell when it's in the dish.

12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
Cream together. 

1 egg
Beat in egg.

3 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon light corn syrup
2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Add, alternating wet ingredients and flour. Spread over risen dough. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes (baking time based on my increasingly suspect oven, take a peak after 30 or 35 minutes). 

Lentil soup

Eat more soup. Eat more lentil soup.

Here are some links to help you out:
Lentil Soup from Alton Brown
Lentil Soup from Allrecipes

The Alton Brown recipe is spicy, but not too spicy if you are spice-phobic. My mom is a big fan of this one because she likes to cook anything that allows her to break out her immersible blender. The Allrecipes soup is a classic hearty lentil soup and an old favorite from soup-or-stew Sundays (holla back, Heater).

Fred says to try them both.

Another great pasta sauce

If you ever have an urge to read a really good food blog, you should look at Smitten Kitchen. This week's pasta recipe is one I saw on Smitten Kitchen a while back and have been meaning to try (link!). It's super simple, just three ingredients. Four if you count salt. Five if you count pasta.

Tomato sauce with onion and (lots of) butter

28 ounce can whole tomatoes (I used unsalted tomatoes, but that just meant I had to add more salt at the end of cooking. Use whatever you happen to come across.)
5 Tablespoons butter
1 medium onion, pealed and halved

Heat ingredients over medium heat. Reduce to simmer and let cook for 45 minutes. Mash up tomatoes. Woman from the blog says to use a wooden spoon, but I found that a potato masher worked much better. Salt to taste. Eat.

Very simple, hearty sauce. I will definitely make this again. Ben commented that the sauce was very fresh-tasting and I would agree, although fresh is a funny way to describe something that is mostly made up of canned tomatoes. We ate this on rigatoni pasta which is a short, tubular pasta that holds sauce well.

By the way, please don't be put off by the amount of butter in the recipe. I've read that fat helps the body to absorb the nutrients found in tomatoes (but I'm not going to cite a proper source for that because I'm lazy).

Easy pasta for two

I'm sure this never happens to you, but for me it seems that the more time I have to do something the more it gets put off. I had decided at least two days ago that I was going to make spaghetti for dinner tonight. Last night I had bread dough fermenting in the refrigerator in preparation for baking bread to go with the spaghetti I was going to make for dinner tonight. All day I thought about what recipe I might try out for sauce to go on the spaghetti I was going to make for dinner tonight. So really I have no excuse for waiting until I already had water boiling for pasta before I started on a sauce.

Tomato sauce in a hurry:

Chop onion. Saute in olive oil. Mince 3 cloves garlic and toss in with onion. Add can of diced tomatoes. Sprinkle in what seasonings you like; I used basil, white pepper, black pepper, and salt. Heat until your pasta is done cooking. If you remember (and I didn't) leave your pasta a little under-done and finish cooking in the sauce. Oh, and add a generous dose of grated Parmesan cheese on top of your serving. 

I know that if I read this recipe I would be skeptical. I hadn't intended to blog this one (notice I had already started eating before getting the camera out). My usual sauce is super saucy with tomato paste and tomato sauce and an hour's cook time. But I was really pleased with how this turned out and it was a nice change of pace from my usual.

P.S. Do you see the bread? I made that. Best bread I've made so far.

Bread and Cheese

Sometimes the best snack is the simplest. Here we have slices of Carolyn's homemade bread with slices of white cheddar on top, along with a scoff at those who opt for anything more complicated to stave off hunger before dinner. Let the cutting board double as your plate to feel manly.