Chocolate Gooey Butter Cake Cookies

We do a lot of visiting over Christmas and New Years. I planned making some Cranberry Walnut Fudge and baking a few Gooey Butter Cakes to take to the homes we were visiting.

My friend Lisa posted a recipe for Gooey Butter Cookies that I just had to try! I had all of the ingredients so I made a double batch and took a half a batch to each house for Christmas Eve/Christmas Day.

When I first saw her recipe, I immediately wondered how great a chocolate version would be! I found out on New Year's Eve, when I made a batch of each! YUM!!!!!

Chocolate Gooey Butter Cookies

Ingredients:

• chocolate cake mix
• 1 egg
• 8 oz. cream cheese, softened
• 1 stick of butter, softened
• powdered sugar

Directions:

• Add cake mix, egg, cream cheese and butter in a bowl. Mix until well combined.
• Chill over night (or at least 4 hours)
• Roll into balls to desired size.
• Roll in powdered sugar.
• Bake at 350* for 9-12 minutes.

I plan on making these, using Lemon cake mix for Easter.

Angel's Pound Cake

One of my favorite cakes is pound cake. Growing up, I have some fond memories of birthday cakes from the local bakery that were pound cakes. There's a bakery in Philly that makes the absolute best pound cake. You can buy it as a birthday cake, wedding cake, even in loaves. All with their signature sugary icing. Mmmmm!

As an alternative to the pound cake from the bakery, Mom would often buy Sara Lee pound cakes from the freezer section of the grocery store. A favorite treat was sliced strawberries with vanilla pudding on top of a slice of Sara Lee pound cake. Mmmmm!

As an adult, I was introduced to homemade pound cakes. One of the ladies I worked with would often bring in a cake to share with us. What a great treat for a Monday morning! Seriously, I remember being on the bus on my way to work on a Monday morning, thinking to myself: "I really hope Angel brings in a pound cake today!" Angel enjoyed to cook and brought in all sorts of treats for us, but the one that sticks out in my mind the most is her pound cake.

Even after she left to move to another state, we still had her pound cake. She gave us all the recipe and occasionally someone would make it and bring it into work. No matter who made it, we still always called it Angel's Pound Cake.

Angel's Pound Cake

Ingredients:

• 2 sticks margarine, softened
• 1 stick butter, softened
• 8 oz. Philadelphia Cream Cheese, softened
• 3 cups sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 2 tsp. almond extract
• 6 large eggs
• 3 cups flour

Directions:

• Cream margarine, butter, cream cheese and sugar together, well.
• Add flavoring. Blend well.
• Add eggs one at a time with 1/2 cup flour with each egg, beating well with each addition.
• Pour batter into prepared (greased and floured) tube or loaf pans.
• Bake at 325 degrees for 1 1/2 hours.

Notes:

• Do not preheat oven.
• To make a marble cake, reserve one cup of batter. Add 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa. Mix well. Drop by spoonfuls onto the batter in the pan and swirl with knife.
• Angel also baked these pound cakes in coffee cans. Perfect size cake for a small group!

This cake is great when topped with this frosting:

Fantastic Frosting

Ingredients:

• 1 small box instant pudding (any flavor)
• 1/2 cup milk
• 8 oz. cool whip

Directions:

• mix ingredients well and frost cake

I'll be sharing this recipe with the following carnivals:

• Tasty Tuesday
• Tuesdays at the Table
• Tempt My Tummy Tuesday

Be sure to check them out for great recipes!

Also, in addition to hosting Tuesdays at the Table, Cole is having another giveaway this month in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month! Click here to read more about it and don't forget to enter!

Ultimate Recipe Swap: Jen's Easy Gooey Butter Cake

I'm not sure how it is in other parts of the country, but sadly, around here (Philadelphia, Jersey shore) little bakeries are few and far between. I remember being a little girl and visiting my Gram at her house down the shore, eating Butter Cake for breakfast. MMmmm!

Many, many years later I found a small bakery near the flower shop where I worked at the time. Occasionally, on Saturday mornings, I would stop at the bakery on my way to work (thanks, Mom!) and pick up a Butter Cake to share with the other poor souls at the shop that were stuck working on a Saturday!

After a while, it became less and less convenient to get to this bakery. So, it became a very rare treat. And now, since we've moved from Philly, we don't get there at all and haven't found a small bakery in or near our new town.

A few years ago, we had a lovely picnic hosted by my parents. It was a chance for us to get together with another family that my parents have known all MY life. (They met shortly before I was born.) We've all seen each other through the years, but not all together at the same time. So it was a really great day!

We all brought something to contribute to the day's meal. I took a salad and a couple of pudding pies. But the best thing of all of the food served that day was the Butter Cake that my sister-in-law, Jen baked!

She gave me the recipe at the time, telling me that it was one of the recipes in her grandmother's recipe box. I never got around to making it and I lost the recipe card in the move (still in boxes in the basement I'm sure) Now that I have the recipe again, I'll be sure to make it soon! I'm drooling right now as I type about it!

Now, I'm sure there are other variations of this recipe to be found on the internet. But since I've only ever eaten this when she made it, I'm calling it Jen's Easy Gooey Butter Cake.

Here' the recipe:

Jen's Easy Gooey Butter Cake

Ingredients for Cake:

• 1 pkg. yellow cake mix
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 egg

Ingredients for topping:

• 8 oz. cream cheese, softened
• 2 eggs
• 1 lb. confectioners sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• Add 1 of the eggs and the butter to the powdered cake mix. Stir (or use hand mixer) until well blended.
• Spread mixture onto an UNgreased 9x13 pan or baking dish.
• In a bowl, combine all ingredients for the topping, mixing well.
• Pour over the cake mixture, spreading to the edges.
• Bake for 35 minutes.

Got a sweet tooth? If so, head over to Life As Mom's weekly Ultimate Recipe Swap. This week's theme is Baked Goods! Mmmmm!