was used as an adhesive for things like Danish rolls and stollens. The gooey butter was smeared across the surface, then the item was placed in coconut, hazelnuts, peanuts, crumbs or whatever was desired so they would stick to the product. Hoffman hired a new baker who was supposed to make deep butter cakes, but got the butter smears mixed up. The mistake was not caught until after the cakes came out of the proof box. Rather than throw them away, Hoffman went ahead and baked them. This baking mistake was made during the Great Depression, which meant supplies for baking ingredients were low. The new cake sold so well that Hoffman kept baking and selling them and soon, so did the other bakers around St. Louis. Another St. Louis baker, Fred Heimburger, also remembers the cake coming on the scene in the 1930s, as a slip up that became a popular hit and local acquired taste. He liked it well enough that Heimburger tried to promote gooey butter cake by taking samples of it with him when he traveled out of St. Louis to visit other bakers in their shops. They liked it, but they could not get their customers to buy it. Their reactions tending to regard it as looking too much like a mistake, and "a flat gooey mess". As such, so it remained as a regional favorite for many decades. Other stories surround the cake's creation; none have been historically verified. Gooey butter cake is also commonly known outside of the St. Louis area as "ooey gooey butter cake", due to its popularization by celebrity chef Paula Deen. Availability Many St. Louis area grocery stores sell fresh or boxed gooey butter cakes. Haas Baking sold a widely distributed, square and packaged version in a box that depicts a colorful, if anachronistic scene of aviator Charles Lindbergh's plane the Spirit of St. Louis flying past downtown St. Louis, the Gateway Arch and the modern cityscape in clouds. Independent or family bakeries make gooey butter cakes, from a time when there were still many neighborhood corner German and Austrian American bakeries in St. Louis, in neighborhoods like Dutchtown, Bevo Mill, and the Tower Grove area, and others. There are now several businesses that specialize in different flavors of gooey butter cake and sell them in coffee shops, or to walk in customers, or by order or shipment. Panera