Gooey Butter Cookies Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is gooey butter made of? ›

Traditionally, it starts with a yeasted crust, which gets filled with a mixture of butter, sugar, eggs, corn syrup, and vanilla, and baked until just barely set. The result is chewy, rich, and creamy, almost like a vanilla pudding that's been nestled into a blondie.

The biggest difference between sugar cookies and butter cookies is that sugar cookies are often rolled thin and cut out using cookie cutters. While butter cookies will hold their shape while baking, the dough is much softer and for best results should be piped onto a baking sheet and then baked.

An excessive amount of butter makes it where the flour is unable to absorb the combined fat, which causes the cookie to spread too widely and the sugar to carbonize more easily because it's surrounded by too buttery a dough.

To make cookies crispy, add less liquid or bake it in the oven for longer to dry out the dough. Generally bake around 13-15min at 180C for a crispy cookie. But if you want a thoroughly crispy cookie – not those just charred on the outside – decrease the temperature to 140C and bake for 30min.

Louis, MO Bakers' gooey butter and a cream cheese and commercial yellow cake mix variant. The original St. Louis, MO Bakers' gooey butter is believed to have originated in the 1930s. It was made with a yeast-raised sweet dough on the bottom.

To store: Store gooey butter cake covered, at room temperature, for 3-4 days or in the refrigerator for up to 1 week. To freeze: Allow the cake to cool to room temperature and then decide on a freezing method. I like to cut gooey butter cake into smaller bars and place them in a gallon freezer ziplock bag.

Sometimes it's a flavor enhancer and sometimes it's a flavor balancer. But to be honest, unless it's a vanilla cookie, it's not a true dealbreaker. Especially if you're making cookies that have lots of other flavors going on, like coconut or dark chocolate.

The best butter for your baked goods depends on what type of recipe you're whipping up. Unsalted, American-style butter works well in goods like cookies, pound cakes and pancakes that require the high-fat content of conventional butter and more flexibility with salt and flavor content.

All-Purpose Flour: The Versatile Choice

This balanced protein level makes it versatile enough to produce both soft and chewy cookies as well as slightly crisp ones. If you're looking for a safe bet or are new to cookie baking, all-purpose flour is your go-to option.

Baking soda is typically used for chewy cookies, while baking powder is generally used for light and airy cookies. Since baking powder is comprised of a number of ingredients (baking soda, cream of tartar, cornstarch, etc.), using it instead of pure baking soda will affect the taste of your cookies.

Why should you not use melted butter in cookies? ›

“Room temp butter is able to hold onto air,” Szewczyk says. “You can mechanically shove air into it by creaming. Warm butter is not able to hold onto it, so you're going to get a denser dough.” When using warmer or melted butter, cookies will struggle to lift and lighten, resulting in a cakier texture, like brownies.

Popping your dough in the fridge allows the fats to cool. As a result, the cookies will expand more slowly, holding onto their texture. If you skip the chilling step, you're more likely to wind up with flat, sad disks instead of lovely, chewy cookies. Cookies made from chilled dough are also much more flavorful.

Cornstarch helps product soft and thick cookies. Using more brown sugar than white sugar results in a moister, softer cookie. An extra egg yolk increases chewiness. Rolling the cookie dough balls to be tall and lumpy instead of wide and smooth gives the cookies a bakery-style textured thickness.

The Fix: Chilling the Dough

Refrigerate the remaining dough until it feels firm to the touch, one to two hours. This chills the butter, so it won't spread rapidly in the oven. Although your cookies won't be as fluffy as they might have been, they won't turn into pancakes.

Regardless, the bottom layer more closely resembles the inside of a traditional cake than it does crust, and the top has a creamy, almost pudding-like texture, traditionally achieved with corn syrup, butter and eggs, and sometimes – in more modern versions – amped up with cream cheese.

So when you melt butter you will see that the milk solids (usually a white sediment) tend to settle towards the bottom of the saucepan and the golden coloured butterfat sits on top of it. The water will tend to sink with the milk solids though some will also evaporate if the butter is brought up to boiling point.

Whipped butter, which can be made from any kind of butter, has had air added to it. It is lighter and lower density, which means that for the same size portion, it is lower in fat and has fewer calories. It's also more spreadable, which is why you'll see it in many a restaurant bread basket.

The top layer is a white foam or froth (the whey proteins) and should be skimmed off with a spoon. The milk solids will drop to the bottom of the saucepan and form a milky layer of sediment. What is left in the middle is a pure golden-yellow liquid called clarified butter.