Ooey Gooey Butter Cake

This has been all over my facebook feed lately.  Evidently a lot of my friends have decided they want to make this and have shared it with each other countless times. I was cleaning out my pantry the other day and found a cake mix that was kind of old so I thought I would kill 2 birds with one stone: get rid of an old cake mix and try a new recipe.

                                                 Ooey Gooey Butter Cake

Cake Layer

1 yellow cake mix

2 eggs

1/2 cup butter, melted

1 teaspoon vanilla

Ooey Gooey Layer

1 8 oz. package cream cheese, softened

16 oz. confectioner's sugar + a couple of tablespoons for sprinkling

2 eggs

1/2 cup butter, melted

1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350.  Grease and flour a 9x13 baking pan.

This is pretty straight forward.  Mix all the ingredients in the cake layer in a medium bowl.  I stirred it by hand because the batter is fairly thick and I thought it was easier to use a wooden spoon than to use the mixer.  Pat the batter evenly in the bottom of the prepared pan (I saved my butter wrappers and used the buttery side as a buffer between my hands and the batter.  The batter did not stick to the wrapper and I managed to pat it evenly with zero mess.)

Mix the cream cheese with the confectioner's sugar, then add the eggs, butter and vanilla.  Mix with a mixer until it is nice and smooth.  Pour on top of the cake layer and bake until the top is slightly brown and a little crisp  (I took mine out too early) Sprinkle with powdered sugar and wait until the cake is cool to cut it into pieces.

Truth time!  I only had about 12 ounces of confectioners sugar so that is what I used.  The consensus here is that was plenty.  Any more and we think it would have been too sweet.  It really did have a perfect sweetness using 1/4 less sugar.  Next time I will bake it a little longer so the top layer is set a little firmer, but it did not stop us from enjoying it just the same.  Since I had less confectioner's sugar than was called for I skipped the sprinkling bit altogether. For presentation purposes,  if I make this for guests or to take to someone I will opt for the sugar dusting.  It would be much prettier.

 I put the leftovers in a refrigerator storage container and the next day we ate it cold.  I did like it better at room temp/slightly warm, but it was still pretty dang good cold.  I have a couple of odd cake mix flavors and I will probably try a variation of this with at least a couple of them. (Why in this world did I ever buy a pineapple cake mix, or did I think I was buying yellow cake and just didn't pay attention, which is my guess btw.)

Anyhow, if you want something easy, ooey and gooey and pretty delicious this might work for you.