This pumpkin cake recipe has a ton of pumpkin flavour and is gently spiced with warming autumn spices. It's super moist, not overly sweet, and it's made with this delicious homemade pumpkin purée and topped with a silky smooth cream cheese pumpkin spread. What more could you ask for in your favourite autumn dessert?
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After many years of looking at how tasteless most pumpkin cake recipes are, I finally created my own recipe that's loaded with autumn aromas, real pumpkin flavour and to-die-for texture.
Like my famous carrot cake recipe, I've also included the extra secret step of making lightly spiced orangey syrup to drizzle on the cake when it comes out of the oven.
The result is an easy homemade pumpkin cake you will only find in the finest hotels, served at afternoon tea for ridiculous prices.
How you serve it is up to you.
You can layer it with pumpkin cream cheese filling between layers or just have it classic London style. Cooked in a loaf pan like pumpkin bread, with the filling either spread on top or served on the side.
Ingredients
- Pumpkin - For grating and making fresh pumpkin purée. If you don't want to make your own, then use Libby's pumpkin purée.
- Flavourings - Vanilla essence in some form. Either powdered, paste or concentrate.
- Spice - Cinnamon ginger powder and nutmeg go into the mix and syrup, while star anise gets added to the syrup.
- Pumpkin seeds - Blended until almost as fine as almond flour.
- Orange - The juice is used to make the syrup.
Instructions
Making one of the best autumn cakes does not get much easier than this. Mixing, baking, drizzling and eating. That's it:)
- Line a loaf pan or any other baking pan with greased parchment paper. I use both because it never sticks.
- Turn the oven to 170 °C or 338 °F.
- Sieve all the dry ingredients through a fine-mesh strainer or drum sieve.
- Grate the pumpkin and mix it with the dry ingredients.
- Mix the wet ingredients until homogenous.
- Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until you have an evenly distributed, smooth batter. Don't over-mix.
- Pour the cake mix into the baking pan and bake for about 45 minutes, or until a kitchen thermometer reads 90 °C or 194 °F when placed into the centre of the bread. Alternatively, use the ancient method of sticking a wooden or metal skewer into the middle. When it comes out clean, your cake is cooked.
- While the cake is cooking, you can make the syrup and maple cream cheese spread.
- As soon as the cake comes out of the oven, poke a load of tiny holes in it with a toothpick. Drizzle the syrup onto the cake until it has soaked up about ⅔ of the syrup. The rest you can keep if you wish to add it later to the already sliced pieces or in a cocktail or tea.
- Let it cool down slightly before carefully removing it from the baking form and cooling it down completely on a wire rack.
- Only slice or spread the top with cream cheese when cooled down completely.
The syrup is just warmed orange juice, water, spices and a small amount of sugar.
All amounts are indicated in the recipe card.
Variations
You can easily modify this recipe or use it in a variety of different ways by doing the following:
- Pumpkin cake bunt - You can use this mix as-is to bake in a bunt pan.
- Muffins - Bake in muffin forms and add streusel and whole pumpkin seeds on top of roasted pumpkin pieces to the mix before baking.
- Pumpkin cupcakes - Simply bake in cupcake forms and top with maple cream cheese frosting and roasted pecans.
- Chocolate chip pumpkin bread - Add some chocolate chips of your choice to the batter before baking. I like dark chocolate chips.
- Streusel topping - Sprinkle with a streusel topping just before baking. To make a streusel mix 75g flour, 75g brown sugar, 25g melted butter, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, and 50g chopped pecan nuts. Then sprinkle on top just before baking.
- Dried fruit and nuts - You can substitute the pumpkin seeds for any other chopped nuts. Add dried fruit like raisins, apricots, cherries, cranberries, chopped dates or prunes. Simply mix in before baking.
- Ginger - If you like ginger then add some grated fresh ginger to the wet mix or ground ginger to the dry ingredients.
Make it vegan
Use this vegan egg substitute mix instead of eggs.
Alternatively, replace the egg with 30g linseeds (flaxseed flour) soaked in 60g water for 30 minutes.
The outcome will be different than with regular eggs, as flax does not have the binding qualities of egg.
Add another 60g of flour to make up some of the losses if you use flax egg.
Frequently asked questions
Keep covered airtight at room temperature for up to 3 days.
Can be frozen for up to 3 months, stored airtight. After that, it loses its freshness.
Apart from the relatively small amount of sugar, it's packed with healthy pumpkin, pumpkin seeds and spices. You can reduce the sugar completely if you want without any effect on the structure and texture.
To make it gluten-free, simply replace the regular wheat flour with a gluten-free cake mix. The results will vary slightly, but it will still be a delicious cake.
Related recipes
- The best carrot cake in the world - Pretty famous, I served it to the royal family in London as well as other famous celebs.
- Borodinsky rye bread - My favourite bread of all time.
- Pumpkin bread - One of my favourite simple pumpkin bake recipes.
- Roasted pumpkin salad - Perfect for autumn salad.
- Easy way to use up pumpkin trim - Be mindful and resourceful while eating well.
Useful equipment for this recipe
Loaf Pan
Countertop Oven
Temperature Probe
Electronic Kitchen Scales
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Recipe
Spiced Triple Pumpkin Cake
Ingredients
For the cake
- 250 g (2 cups) all purpose flour
- 200 g (3 ⅛ cups) green pumpkin seeds - ground
- 12 g (3 teaspoon) baking powder
- 4 g (1 teaspoon) baking soda
- 400 g (1 ⅝ cups) pumpkin puree
- 300 g (2 ⅗ cups) pumpkin - grated
- 2 g (1 teaspoon) cinnamon
- 1 g (½ teaspoon) grated nutmeg
- 2 g (1 teaspoon) ginger powder
- 100 g (½ cups) brown sugar
- 4 (4) large eggs
- 180 g (⅘ cups) canola oil
For the syrup
- 200 g (⅘ cups) orange juice - freshly squeesed
- 20 g (1 ⅔ tablespoon) brown sugar
- 3 (3) whole star anise
- 1 (1) cinnamon stick
- ½ (½) grated nutmeg
- 130 g (½ cups) water
For the pumpkin maple cream cheese
- 150 g (⅔ cups) cream cheese like Philadelphia
- 200 g (1 cups) pumpkin puree - homemade or store-bought
- 20 g (1 tablespoon) maple syrup - optional
Instructions
- Line a loaf pan or any other baking pan with greased parchment paper. I use both because it never sticks.
- Turn the oven to 170°C or 338°F.
- Sieve all the dry ingredients through a fine-mesh strainer or drum sieve.
- Grate the pumpkin and mix it through the dry ingredients.
- Mix the wet ingredients until homogenous.
- Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until you have an evenly distributed smooth batter. Don't over-mix.
- Pour the cake mix into the baking pan and bake for about 45 minutes or until a kitchen thermometer reads 90°C or 194°F when placed into the centre of the bread. Alternatively use the stone age method of sticking a wooden or metal skewer into the middle. When it comes out clean, your cake is cooked.
- While the cake is cooking you can make the syrup and maple cream cheese spread. The syrup is just warmed orange juice, water, spices and a small amount of sugar. The cream cheese is just mixed together until smooth.
- As soon as the cake comes out of the oven poke a load of tiny holes in it with a toothpick. Drizzle the syrup onto the cake until it has soaked up °about ⅔ of the syrup. The rest you can keep if you wish to add it later to the already sliced pieces or in a cocktail or tea.
- Let it cool down slightly before carefully removing it from the baking form and cooling down completely on a wire rack.
- Only slice or spread top with cream cheese when cooled down completely.
Notes
- You can bake this cake in any shape like a springform pan, bunt cake mould or make a layer cake out of it.
- Bake on a baking tray in a thinner layer to make a rolled pumpkin cake log.
- Always sieve dry ingredients and mix until well combined. Mix wet ingredients evenly before adding the two together.
- Never overmix cake batters.
- Use weighing scales for the most accurate results.
- The cake is done when a kitchen thermometer reads above 90 degrees Celcius or 194 degrees Fahrenheit when inserted into the centre. Alternatively, use the pre-historic method of checking that a toothpick or bone comes out clean.
- Make sure to drizzle the warm syrup on a hot cake for best soaking.
- If your oven is less than ideal and easily burns stuff simply place a tray on the bottom shelf and top shelf then cook your cake on the middle shelf. Place a small bowl of water on the bottom shelf. The trays and water will help to even out the heat in the oven and minimise the risk of burning it.
- Can be store at room temperature when kept airtight for 3 days.
- Can be wrapped in plastic and frozen for up the 3 months.
Jenny Carpenter
Amazing pumpkin cake recipe. I made a double batch for my family on Saturday. We just finished the last few slices for breakfast. Will bake it again before fall is gone. The fresh pumpkin puree is a real game changer. I followed your advise and used one of those small orange ones. Think you called it a Hokkaido pumpkin. Anyway, Was delicious and by far the best pumpkin cake recipe I ever tried.
amy
Any advice on if I want to leave out the ground pumpkin seeds, can I just omit? Or do I need to replace with flour or something else? TY
Charlé Visser
You can replace it with other nuts like walnuts, almonds or simply leave them out. They add no structural value to the cake but rather texture and flavour.