Spiced Pumpkin Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting 🎃🍁🧡 is a my go-to moist pumpkin cake recipe! It’s topped with a creamy homemade cream cheese frosting making this no-mixer cake a family FAVORITE recipe every year! This EASY fall dessert is perfect for Thanksgiving, Halloween, and more!
The BEST Recipe for Pumpkin Cake
- Let’s first talk about frosting because cream cheese frosting is my weakness. Just pass me a spoon. The thick layer of tangy cream cheese frosting complements the warming spices in the cake perfectly.
- And this pumpkin cake beneath all that wonderful with cream cheese frosting is my favorite, go-to pumpkin cake recipe. It’s soft, springy, and brimming with spiced pumpkin flavor.
- It’s a fast, easy, one-bowl, no mixer pumpkin spice cake recipe that everyone loves. This pumpkin cake is irresistible, and sinking your teeth into it is pure comfort and bliss.
- I use oil rather than butter, which keeps the cake extra moist and since pumpkin naturally makes everything moister, there’s no chance of a dry cake here.
- My family has said that this pumpkin spice cake reminds them a bit of carrot cake, minus the carrots, thanks to similar spices and cream cheese frosting.
Pumpkin Spice Cake Ingredients
This is a super easy, no-frills recipe for pumpkin cake that uses basic ingredients.
For the pumpkin cake:
- Eggs
- Granulated sugar
- Pumpkin puree
- Canola oil, vegetable oil or your favorite oil for baking. Coconut oil also works if you enjoy the flavor of it.
- Pumpkin pie spice
- Vanilla extract
- Dry ingredients: All-purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt.
For the cream cheese frosting:
Tip: To save time, you can buy a tub of store bought cream cheese frosting sold in the baking aisle near boxed cake mixes.
- Cream cheese – Make sure it’s at room temperature and that it’s full fat cream cheese, sold in a brick . Do not use anything labeled as ‘lite’ or ‘whipped’ cream cheese because both of those products contain a high percentage of water and your frosting won’t turn out.
- Butter
- Powdered sugar
- Vanilla extract
- Salt
Note: Scroll down to the recipe card section of the post for the ingredients with amounts included and for more complete directions.
How to Make Spiced Pumpkin Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
This recipe for pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting couldn’t be easier to make! Here’s how to make both the cake and frosting:
- Whisk together the wet and dry ingredients in separate bowls, then combine the two.
- Turn the batter out into an 8×8-inch pan.
- Bake until the center is set and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
- Once the pumpkin cake is fully cooled, you can make the cream cheese frosting. Simply add all the pumpkin spice cake frosting ingredients into a bowl and beat until smooth and fluffy.
- Spread the frosting onto the cake, then dig in!
Tips for Making This Recipe
Pumpkin puree: It’s so important that you use pure pumpkin puree and not pre-sweetened pumpkin pie filling! Double check the ingredients list on your canned pumpkin — there should only be one ingredient listed (pumpkin).
Oil: I don’t recommend substituting applesauce for the oil which is something people ask me. Both applesauce and pumpkin are incredibly moist, and I think if you combined the two in this recipe your pumpkin spice cake would wind up being a bit of a mess.
Frosting: When you make the homemade cream cheese frosting the cream cheese needs to be at room temperature. If the cream cheese is too cold, it won’t whip up properly and won’t blend in well with the other ingredients.
Recipe FAQs
I haven’t tried that myself, but I bet it’d work out okay. Check your cupcakes around the 20-minute mark to see if they’re finished. Otherwise I recommend making this pumpkin spice cupcake recipe that I shared years ago.
Yes, you can double this recipe and bake it in a 9×13-inch pan. It’ll probably need to bake for roughly the same amount of time, but keep an eye on it because all ovens run differently.
I’m sure you could, but I never have personally tried this pumpkin spice cake recipe with homemade puree so I’m not sure if it will work out exactly the same.
I don’t dabble in gluten-free baking, so I can’t say for sure whether a gluten-free 1:1 flour substitute will work. However, my gut says yes so long as you use a gluten-free all-purpose flour substitute and not something such as almond flour (almond flour is just ground almonds and contains no gluten, therefore it won’t behave remotely like regular flour).
The pumpkin spice cake with cream cheese frosting is incredibly moist and is slightly denser than regular cake, so I think the batter could be made gluten-free.
Recipe Video Tutorial
Pumpkin Spice Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
Video
Equipment
Ingredients
Cake
- 2 large eggs
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup pumpkin puree
- ½ cup canola or vegetable oil
- 2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt, or to taste
Frosting
- 6 ounces cream cheese, softened to room temperature (do not use lite or whipped cream cheese products; use full fat cream cheese sold in a brick like Philadelphia)
- ¼ cup unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 1 ½ cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted if it's particularly lumpy
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon salt, or to taste
Instructions
Make the Cake
- Preheat oven to 350F. Line an 8×8-inch pan with aluminum foil and spray with cooking spray; set aside.
- To a large bowl, add the eggs, sugar, pumpkin, oil, pumpkin pie spice, vanilla, and whisk to combine.
- Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and stir until just combined, don’t overmix.
- Turn batter out into prepared pan, smoothing the top lightly with a spatula. Bake for about 35 to 40 minutes (I baked 36 minutes) or until center is set and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs, no batter.
- Set cake aside on a cooling rack to cool completely before frosting it so the frosting doesn’t melt.
Make the Frosting
- Tip: To save time, you can buy a tub of store bought cream cheese frosting sold in the baking aisle near boxed cake mixes.To make your own frosting, to a large bowl (or to the bowl of a stand mixer) add the cream cheese, butter, confectioners’ sugar, vanilla, salt, and whisk until smooth and fluffy or beat with an electric mixer (or use the paddle attachment of a stand mixer).
- Turn frosting out onto cooled cake and spread into a smooth, even, flat layer using a spatula or knife.Tip – If you have a small amount of frosting leftover, it will keep airtight in the fridge for at least 2 weeks when store separately.
- Slice and serve.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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More Pumpkin Cake Recipes:
Cooking With Pumpkin: Recipes That Go Beyond the Pie – My second cookbook with over 50 pumpkin recipes including sweets, savory, drinks, and a photo for nearly every recipe. I’d be super grateful if you headed over to Amazon.
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cake — This soft and moist pumpkin cake is loaded with chocolate in every bite!! An EASY one-bowl fall dessert that’s perfect for impromptu entertaining or anytime a pumpkin craving strikes!!
Vegan Pumpkin Cake — This is a fast, easy pumpkin cake that you’d never guess is vegan! I topped it with a spiced buttercream frosting for even more pumpkin flavor.
Spiced Pumpkin Crumb Cake — A FAST and EASY no-mixer pumpkin crumb cake with rich pumpkin flavor!! Super soft, tender, and topped with the BEST crumble topping that you’ll fall in love with! Great for brunches and holiday entertaining!!
Pumpkin Poke Cake — Easy and the BEST PUMPKIN CAKE ever!! Two kinds of CARAMEL sauce, TOFFEE bits, CHOCOLATE CHIPS, whipped topping and more!! A total WINNER you must make!!
Pumpkin Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting — A marriage of pumpkin cake and carrot cake into one soft, moist, tender, and amazing cake!! The tangy cream cheese frosting is truly the icing on this easy cake!!
Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bundt Cake — This easy pumpkin cake is loaded with chocolate chips and drizzled in rich and decadent chocolate ganache. It’s one of the best pumpkin cakes I’ve ever had!!
Spiced Pumpkin Streusel Coffee Cake — A FAST and EASY no-mixer pumpkin coffee cake with rich pumpkin flavor and topped with big buttery crumbles!! So soft, moist, and tender! You’re going to LOVE this cake for breakfast, brunch, or entertaining!
Originally posted October 2, 2015 and reposted October 9, 2020 and August 23, 2024 with updated text.
Best pumpkin cake ever!! Great recipe; so easy! Full disclosure: I have never made the frosting yet–the cake is great as a standalone. (I will try the frosting one day, though.) :)
Thanks for the 5 star review, Leslie, and I’m so pleased to hear that my recipe is the best pumpkin cake ever for you (even without the frosting)!
WOW!! This cake is amazing!!! Plus it’s super easy and quick to make! I won a baking contest w/this recipe! It’s my fav fall desert that I make every year. The only thing is that I think the frosting is too sweet (at least in my opinion) When I cut the sugar amount in half, it tasted SO GOOD!!
Thanks for the 5 star review, Lucy, and I’m glad that my recipe helped you win a baking contest! That’s incredible! Glad you’ve gotten the frosting to your liking too.