If, like me, you’re from St. Louis, you KNOW what Gooey Butter Cake is! I’ve been wanting to create a gluten-free and dairy-free version of this sugary treat for awhile, so when the kids insisted on making Jesus a gooey butter cake for His birthday this Christmas, I jumped on the opportunity to create! When it comes to baking with kids, I like “semi-homemade” recipes, to limit the number of ingredients (and mess!). I opted to use a Simple Mills cake mix instead of using a variety of Paleo flours to make the base of the cake. Add in some ghee, eggs, Kite Hill dairy-free cream cheese, and almond extract, and you have yourself a Paleo gooey butter cake . . . until you add in the 4 cups of organic powdered sugar, so we will just call this GF/DF and be ok with it! Please notice that the cream cheese I have pictured is EVERYTHING cream cheese, which you will NOT want in your cake, lol. Thankfully I noticed my mistake before I added the cream cheese to the mixing bowl, and didn’t ruin the cake. Instead, I had to make my husband go out on Christmas Eve to find me some dairy-free PLAIN cream cheese. Thanks, babe.

Ingredients:

1 box Simple Mills vanilla cake mix
1/2 cup ghee
3 eggs, divided
8oz dairy-free cream cheese
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
4 cups organic powdered sugar

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F and grease a square cake pan.
Melt ghee and set aside.
Empty cake mix into a large bowl. Stir in melted ghee and 1 egg.
Press batter into prepared baking dish.
In a large mixing bowl, mix dairy-free cream cheese, almond extract, powdered sugar, and the remaining 2 eggs.
Using a stand mixer or an electric hand mixer, beat the mixture on medium-high for 3 minutes.
Spread cream cheese mixture on top of the cake mixture.
Bake at 350F for 30-35 minutes.
Allow the cake to cool, and dust with more powdered sugar, if desired.