Gooey Butter Cake

I am falling more and more in love with this tea. It’s such a wonderful lemon black, and the floral note just puts it over the top. I’m going to be hard pressed to find a lemon flavored tea I love as much as this one, but the next time Frank releases a tea with lemon notes I will be buying! Also, I’m bumping up my rating because I like this more than the first time I reviewed it.

I’m sipping this while listening to the rain fall outside. It’s supposed to turn to ice later tonight, so I’m thinking we’ll be staying put tonight and a good part of tomorrow. Can’t say that this bothers me. Maybe I’ll see how much of my stash I can bust through while we are iced/snowed in. There are definitely worse ways to spend a weekend!

To all the New England Steepsters, be safe! It looks like this storm is going to be a doozy and not something to be taken lightly!

So, I know I just posted about this tea but I decided to see if this tea could be re-steeped. I got more water and steeped it for four minutes. I put two and a half teaspoons of sugar in my mug. Stirred it all up.

Oh my! The flavor is richer with the added sugar. Much more gooey cake. The tartness of the lemon is mingling with the sugar and giving me that sweet-tart flavor that I wanted the first time.

I’m probably going to see exactly how many times I can re-steep this before the flavor gives out. I didn’t think the flavor would still be this bold with the second steep.

Edit: The answer to that question is that you can steep this about three times.

I think I’m going to let this one sit and meld a bit longer, as I am not getting much out of it beyond a touch of lemon zest. I added agave, but it didn’t really change anything. It just tastes like potential.

It does remind me a bit of Pancake Breakfast but lighter, and of course now that I’ve let it cool a lot more I can taste buttery cake. Or maybe it even reminds me of crepes, I like mine with a bit of lemon zest.

Also I have never had a gooey butter cake so I really don’t even know what I’m looking for other than butter and cake. I have just pulled up a recipe though, and next time I have a reason to bake for a bunch of people, I’m making it.

For anyone else who has objections to Paula Deen’s cake mix way (baking snob, sorry), here is a from-scratch way: http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2010/03/st-louis-gooey-butter-cake/

Trying another tea from ch3rryprincess! Thank you! This has been on my “to try” list for a while, and it has been all I can do to keep myself from ordering it.

Brewed up, the aroma is quite interesting and tasty. I can smell a lemon verbena sort of lemony aroma, backed by caramelly aromas and a black tea base. Unfortunately, IMO, this tea smells more promising than it tastes. Sure, it’s lemony (kind of a lemongrass/lemon verbena sort of flavour), but other than a hint of sweetness, that’s all I’m getting, yet bitterness is already poking through in spite of a careful 2.5 minute infusion in a Finum basket. This is certainly not bad, and I’m sure it’s great sweetened, but I much prefer black teas with more caramelly flavour (which I was hoping this one would have in addition to the lemon).

(I’ll admit, it’s been about 5 minutes since I wrote this and neglected to hit “post”, and it’s growing on me a bit. Still not caramelly enough for me, but I do kind of like it, haha.)

Sipdown!
Actually, I didn’t drink the last cup, it was my son, Drew, but I told him I’d post it.

For those who don’t know, Gooey Butter Cake was invented in St. Louis in the 1930s when a local baker accidentally used the wrong butter (the gooey butter instead of the deep butter). Because it was around the depression, they sold it anyway, & people loved it so much that they started making it all of the time.

In St. Louis, you can get gooey butter cake almost anywhere, but it’s not something I’ve eaten, due to my intolerances to dairy, gluten, & sugar. The only other ingredient it contains is eggs!

So I can’t say for sure if this tea tastes like the real deal, but it was an interesting tea, with a nice lemony essence to it.

Yay!!! Its here!!
Its steeping RIGHT NOW as I type this!
I can’t wait – I can’t wait!
I’m like a kid at Christmas!
My Gooey Butter Cake tea came along with my Caramel Pumpkin Cheesecake today!
Of course I had to try this first although honestly – that Caramel Pumpkin Cheesecake tea smells SO SO AMAZING!
Not that this one doesn’t but I think the CPC has a stronger aroma.
Okay let me check my brew here…. Auggg who am I kidding it has not been long enough – but let me tell you its smelling GOOOOOOD!
I think the only thing that was disappointing about getting this tea was I was secretly hoping for some of Frank’s wife’s (wish I knew her name) home made gooey butter cake haha. Yeah I don’t want much do I!?!
Its time!
OKay this is one of those teas you really NEED to add a little sweetener to.
I took my first couple of sips and it was good but I was not getting that CAKEY or GOOEY flavor – added a little rock sugar – AMAZING!
I don’t mind having to add a little sugar now and then to some teas – especially when they are DESSERT teas like this one. Now if I had to add sugar to a tea from teavivre, or mandala, or verdant, or stone leaf etc that would be wrong, but this is meant to be decedent so its fine with me.
With the sugar added its quite lovely. A good black base to hold up the interesting flavors of the gooey butter cake. There is a lemony flavor here too.
Gooey butter cake can come in just the regular flavor or a multitude of flavors really ANY flavor you can imagine.
This one has a lemon zest to it. Its nice.
There is also a toasty quality to it as well.
I am not sure I am going to have to sit with this for awhile. I am getting a bit more of a creme brulee flavor from it which trust me is NOT a bad thing, but I need to just study this one a bit longer and maybe use more leaf – I was light on the leaf in this steep.
Oh and I am absolutely going to have to try this ICED as well like Frank had it!

OK… first, I need to thank Azzrian for suggesting this flavor. It is so amazingly good.

I love Gooey Butter Cake. My favorite one is the Lemon Gooey Butter Cake from Paula Deen’s baked goods that are sold at WalMart. I don’t like to shop there, it’s like my least favorite place to shop, but, when I do shop there, I always visit the bakery in search of Paula Deen’s Gooey Butter cake, specifically, the lemon gooey butter cake. Oh my goodness it’s so good. But I’m pretty sure it is not healthy. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s the opposite of that, and something I shouldn’t eat. So the idea of having a gooey butter cake in a tea flavor without all the fat and calories that I’d get from the gooey butter cake, that’s sounds like a wonderful alternative to me.

Now… I’m not going to say that this is just as good as a gooey butter cake, because … it isn’t. Nothing really takes the place of the gooey butter cake, but … I think that this tea is tastier than NO gooey butter cake, and that’s about how much gooey butter cake I should eat. NONE. This is really good, and has the flavor that I love from the gooey butter cake (a little more lemon might be even better since I prefer the lemon variety). Sweet, buttery, rich, yummy.

And fat free.

Thanks to Azzrian for permitting me to taste my first 52 teas.

So inversely with a crème brûlée I have nothing to say about gooey butter cake, I never had the chance to taste one.
I made some research about this cake and it seems really nice, maybe one day I’ll try to do one.

I must confess something (I hope 52 teas would forgive me !) : seeing the picture I saw…a Hachis Parmentier !and I found this very weird…but knowing that a bacon maple tea was existing…I research the Gooey butter cake recipe and was totally reassured !

The dry leaves scent is really amazing, so fruity, absolutely divine.
Brewed I get a very thin aroma of pastry but the leading note is more fruity and clearly lemony.
Lemon is the star of this tea I think.
The black tea is smooth and pleasant but I didn’t find it very much character.
This is a nice afternoon tea, probably ideal to go along with a pastry.
I’m looking forward to taste this famous Gooey Butter cake pastry now !

So. I expected to be able to review a bunch of samples today and yesterday. My plan for my day off yesterday and today was to sit down happily with some tea and play my new copy of old-skool Riven.

That did not happen.

You see – work before play – I decided to first update some Ops forms I created for work and print off more. We absolutely need some for Tuesday. Which was the point when I discovered that the ENTIRE Microsoft Office Suite had mysteriously vanished from our computer.

My sister – in a stunningly self-centered move – uninstalled it because of a minor, annoying, Word-related prompt that appears at start-up. (This is left over from a tech-stupid, failed attempt on our part to install a more complete language pack to Windows.) My sister – who is disabled and does not work or go to school, unlike the rest of the family – somehow decided, “No one uses this, anyway,” and deleted Word, Excel, Powerpoint…

So I spent all of yesterday trying to System Restore and whatnot to fix it. De nada. We are now stuck with no working word processing/spreadsheet programs except crappy free ones. So unless we can borrow old installation discs off someone, we will probably need a new computer. Like we can afford that. Oh, and in the process of trying to fix that, I temporarily couldn’t get Riven to work, either. What a day. I had to vent, guys.

But my 52teas order came today! That’s such an improvement over yesterday, seriously. Just that. Huge improvement.

I decided to try this one first. When I cracked open the bag, wow, what a great smell! It’s very lemon-y on top, but there’s definitely something like butter and cake underneath that. Very promising.

I steeped this up – about 12oz worth with a scant teaspoon of rock sugar – and…the taste is…the taste is… Hmm. Um.

I’m not sure what this tastes like. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to taste like. Does cake taste like this? It’s pleasant enough, but I don’t get “cake.” It’s quite lemon-y.

Overall, it’s pleasant, but I wasn’t sure what to think of it. There’s a quality to it that’s almost like a tiny bit of sourness or astringency, and a tiny note of bitterness. I decided to add just a touch more sugar (white sugar, so that it would dissolve) and some milk. My instinct was that the milk would mellow this one out.

Wow! Did the milk ever help! I’m not so sure about the sugar because I can really taste it; but mellowed with milk, the better notes of this tea really shine through. It’s got a nice balance of lemon and sweet to it. I definitely think I taste something closer to “cake” at the bottom of the sip now (not the back, mind you, the bottom, let’s be specific here), but…damn that white sugar! Seems to be killing things. Man, why did I ever put this nasty stuff in my tea?! Never again, I swear. I’ll just suffer through it not being as sweet! Blech!

VERY nice with a bit of sugar and milk, anyway. Definitely has a “comfort food” factor to it, a good gaming tea!

Received this one from kittylovestea.

I’m not exactly sure what gooey butter cake is suppose to taste like. But it sounds & looks good.

I’m only getting a nice lemon taste from this with a nice black base. No butter, no cakey goodness. I do have more to give it another go. But right now just a plain old tea that you would turn into iced tea.

ETA: I had this again yesterday. I went & oversteeped it… ok next weekend I am investing in a real tea timer!!
So I was still getting only lemon & some astringency because of the over steep. Once it cooled I did get some of that delicious bakey flavour. I do have enough for one more cup, so I will try it again!

ETA 2: Finished this off this morning, some strange smell coming from the pouch. No astringency this time, but not much flavour. Still lemoney, maybe a hint of cake this time around. Definitely DID NOT over steep this time, no astringency to be found.