Pumpkin spice cake!! For the longest time, I strongly disliked anything pumpkin spice flavoured. If something had pumpkin in it, it was an immediate no from me.
But turns out I had just not tried a good pumpkin dessert.
THIS CAKE HAS CHANGED MY OPINION. The flavour and the texture of it was so good. It was also extremely easy to make!
Video Tutorial
The pumpkin flavour
This cake has both pumpkin puree and pumpkin spice in it.
If you’re from the UK, I’ve learnt that buying these two ingredient is kind of hard. Most places don’t have it, even when it is pumpkin spice season.
Pumpkin spice, or just pumpkin anything, is not very big here.
So I get them both from Amazon. It’s a lot easier than having to hunt for them.
What size tins are best for this cake?
For most cakes I make, I use 6 inch cake tins. I feel this is the perfect size for a cake.
So the batter for this cake will make enough for two 6 inch tins.
However, you could also bake it in two 7 or 8 inch cake tins. The cake layers will just be thinner.
If you are using 7 or 8 inch tins, the cake will bake quicker. So instead of baking it for 40-45 minutes, check the cake after around 25-30 minutes. Then see if it needs to be baked for longer.
Baking the cake layers
This cake is baked at 170c/325f, which is a little lower than cakes are typically baked at.
I prefer baking cakes at this temp, it just helps them bake a little flatter.
They are done when a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.
After they are baked, I let them cool down for around 10 minutes, then brushed them with a pumpkin spice milk I made. Then I let them cool completely.
I left them to cool whiles they were in the tin, but after 10 minutes you could take them out, just to speed up the cooling process.
Why did you add a pumpkin spice milk?
In the recipe you will see that I made a pumpkin spice milk and then brushed it onto the cake.
I do this to a lot of my cakes. It’s a great way too add some more moisture as well as some flavour.
You might have seen people use a thing called ‘simple syrup’ on cakes. It’s essentially just a mixture of water and sugar, that is brushed onto cakes to keep them moist.
This milk mixture I add has a similar effect. But I like this better because it doesn’t add too much extra sweetness to the cake!
Corn flour in cream cheese frosting
I like to add a little bit of corn flour/corn starch into my cream cheese frosting. It helps with the thickness of it.
I use to struggle so much with making cream cheese frosting. It would always end up extremely runny.
I played around with quantities of the ingredients a little and then also added corn flour and now it’s always the perfect thickness.
All the corn flour is doing it adding extra powder to your frosting, but without adding extra sweetness. Overly sweet cream cheese frosting, or any frosting to be honest, is the worse thing to have ever existed. I do not like it.
However, with that being said….you could leave it out if you want. You don’t need to replace it with anything.
The frosting will still turn out good. I just like the extra addition of it!
Looking for more simple cake recipes? I think you should take a look at some of my favourites
Pumpkin Spice Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients
- For the cake:
125g softened unsalted butter
125g pumpkin puree
1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
125g granulated sugar
125g brown sugar
4 eggs
250g self-raising flour
60ml milk
- For the pumpkin spice milk:
80ml milk
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- For the cream cheese frosting:
200g softened unsalted butter
200g icing sugar
40g corn flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
400g cream cheese
Directions
- Making the cake:
- Pre-heat your oven to 170c/325f, then grease and line two round 6 inch cake tins.
- In a large bowl, add in the butter, pumpkin puree, pumpkin pie spice, vanilla and both sugars. Beat these together on high speed for 5 minutes. If you are making this by hand, just whisk aggressively for as long as you can.
- Add 2 of the eggs into this, whisk until combined, then whisk in the remaining 2 eggs.
- Now add in the flour and milk, whisk just until you get a smooth batter.
- Pour this into your cake tins then bake for around 40-45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.
- Making the pumpkin spice milk:
- Mix together the milk, sugar and pumpkin pie spice. At this point the pumpkin pie spice will form into clumps in the milk, this is ok.
- Heat this in the microwave for 30 seconds then mix. Keep repeating this until both the sugar and pumpkin pie spice has dissolved in the milk. You don't need the milk to boil or get too hot, you just want to heat it until everything has dissolved.
- Now add in the vanilla.
- Brush this milk mixture onto the cakes whiles they're still warm, then leave the cakes to cool completely.
- Making the cream cheese frosting:
- In a large bowl, add the butter and beat for about 1 minute. Then add in the icing sugar, corn flour and vanilla. Mix until the icing sugar has all incorporated, then beat for 5 minutes.
- Now add in the cream cheese and mix just until you get a smooth frosting.
- Leave this in the fridge until you're ready to use it.
- Assembling:
- Once the cakes have completely cooled, you can put everything together.
- I like to cut the top of the cakes off, to get even layers, but you don't have too.
- Add a layer of the cream cheese frosting in between the cakes, then decorate however you like!
Found your reel on instagram, then came to the website and thought “oh that kitchen looks similar and the cakes look the same”. Not me not even reading your insta account name lol!!
Your other tip on adding corn flour to cream cheese icing sounds so good! I’m totally guilty of putting too much icing sugar in there to get the right texture.
Thanks for the recipe, trying it out now 🙂