Gooey butter cake

I was thinking through what to do for our Easter dessert, and when I saw this, I knew it would be perfect. I made it while cooking the rest of our Easter meal and it was super easy.  Here's all you need:

Cake:
1 boxed yellow cake mix
1 egg
1 stick melted butter

Filling:
1 8-oz package cream cheese, softened
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 stick melted butter
1 16 oz box powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350.
Combine cake ingredients and mix well with electric mixer. Pat the mixture into the bottom of a lightly greased 13 x 9 pan.

Beat cream cheese in a large bowl until smooth.  Add eggs, vanilla and butter and beat well.  Add powdered sugar (gradually, so you don't end up with a sugar cloud!) and blend until mixture is smooth and fluffy. Spread evenly over cake batter and bake for 40 to 50 minutes.

My finished product was not as gooey as Paula's picture looks but everyone loved it. I garnished with strawberries. I'm a chocolate lover at heart, but this is one of the BEST non chocolate desserts I've had...although when I went to look up the recipe link, I saw that there is a chocolate version of this cake. Uh oh! :)

German chocolate cake

I'm sure you were all anxiously awaiting this post...just kidding!  Unfortunately, my cake did not look nearly as pretty as this picture....but it did taste good!  The recipe is lengthy, so I'll just point you to it here.  Many of my recipes come from this site, Annie's Eats - you should definitely check it out!

A few notes on this cake...a lot of new skills for me, like cutting 2 cake layers into 4, whipping egg whites into meringue and making a custard.  The only one that didn't go super well was the custard.  I wasn't sure how thick it needed to get and I know now that I did not let it get thick enough.  After assembling the cake, the liquid from the coconut layer soaked into the cake, leaving pretty much a coconut only layer (I omitted the nuts).  It still tasted good, just lacked that typical German chocolate filling.  It will be awhile before I make this again, just due to the time it took, but I will at some point and hopefully will have a perfect cake to report!

Coming soon...

In the process of making this...

Excited to report back!