Fishtown Butter Cake

One of the things I remember growing up in Fishtown, a neighborhood in Philadelphia, was the number of good bakeries that were nearby.  One of my family's favorites was Claus' on Girard Avenue.  Sadly, Claus' is now closed.  But, another good bakery, Stocks, is still up and running on Lehigh Avenue.  You can find the location of Stock's at this link.

Saturday mornings were great.  Sometimes my dad would go to Claus' to get their world famous butter cake.  Living outside of Philly now, good butter cake has been hard to find.  Fortunately, my brother-in-law and two of my aunts provided me with recipes so I could make good Fishtown butter cake at home.

The finished product is pictured above (with homemade mac & cheese in the background - but that is for another day).

Butter cake has two main components:  the crust and the filling.  Be sure to preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

For the crust, you need 1 box of yellow cake mix, 1 egg and 1 stick of butter.  Mix the ingredients together, and press into a 9x13 pan.  Do not grease the pan!

For the filling, you need 1 8 oz block of Philadelphia cream cheese, a 1 pound bag of 10x confectioner's sugar, 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon of vanilla, and half a stick of butter, melted.  Combine using a mixer on low.  Then beat on medium for 2 minutes.

Pour the filling into the crust, and bake for 30 minutes.  I used a glass pyrex pan, so I let it bake for 35 minutes.

The finished product is very sweet and very addictive.