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Applesauce Cake

Last Updated On: February 03, 2024 | Published: October 16, 2023 by Melissa Diamond | 8 Comments
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This ultra moist apple sauce cake is simple to make, and so delicious! This homemade bundt cake has wonderful spiced flavor and a heavenly caramel glaze.

Keep this recipe in mind as a year-round favorite, but we especially crave spice cakes in the fall and winter months!

Applesauce Cake, sliced, on a pedestal.

Why we Love It

There are many reasons to love this Applesauce Cake. Here are just a few!

  • Super moist from the applesauce in the recipe
  • Wonderful warm spiced flavor
  • Delicious homemade glaze (topped with toffee bits)!
  • Bundt Cakes are always a favorite- so simple and easy to decorate!
  • Makes a great fall birthday cake recipe, Thanksgiving cake, potluck dessert, and more!

Ingredients for Applesauce Cake

Here's a quick look at the main ingredients for our cake. You can find the full listing, including ingredients for the caramel glaze, in our recipe card at the bottom of this post!

Ingredients for Applesauce Cake.

Applesauce adds light apple flavor and lots of moisture to the cake.

Cake flour makes for a tender crumb (as it has less protein than all purpose flour which reduces gluten formation).

Apple Spice adds the delicious flavor of warm spices to the cake (including cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice).

Cream Cheese adds richness and moisture to the cake. Many of our "velvet cake recipes" call for softened cream cheese as well.

How to Make Applesauce Cake

You can find the full, printable Applesauce Cake further down in this post. Here is a quick rundown of our steps!

  • Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Grease and flour a bundt or tube pan.
  • In a medium bowl, whisk the cake flour, apple pie spice, baking powder, baking soda, and salt for 30 seconds and set aside.
Dry ingredients in a bowl with whisk for applesauce cake.
  • In another bowl combine the vegetable oil, applesauce, and vanilla extract. Set aside.
Wet ingredients for Applesauce Cake, in a measuring cup.
  • In the bowl of your mixer, add the butter, cream cheese and mix at medium speed until smooth.
  • Gradually add the sugar and mix at medium speed for 2-3 minutes.
Cream Cheese and Butter Mixture in a mixing bowl, with paddle attachment.
  • Add the room temperature eggs one at a time, mixing after each until the egg yolk has blended.
  • With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and the applesauce mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture (We did 3 additions of the dry mixture, 2 additions of wet).
  • Slightly increase the mixer speed just until combined.
  • Scoop the batter into the prepared tube pan or bundt pan.
Applesauce Cake Batter in Bundt Pan.
  • Bake at 325 degrees for 40-45 minutes.  Check your cake at about 40 minutes using a long wooden skewer or a toothpick to determine doneness.  Bake until the toothpick  comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached.  Baking times can vary! It may take longer in your oven.
  • Allow the cake to cool in the cake pan on a wire rack for ten minutes before turning out.
Freshly baked, unglazed Applesauce Bundt Cake on pedestal.

Caramel Glaze

This applesauce cake tastes amazing all on its own, but we finished ours with a homemade caramel glaze. Apple, spices, and caramel are such a great combination (as with our Caramel Apple Cake)!

This is a simple combination of brown sugar, butter, salt, heavy cream, and vanilla extract. We also add a bit of light corn syrup as it prevents sugar crystallization.

The caramel sauce is prepared in a saucepan, and then cooled before using. It will thicken more as it cools.

You can speed up the cooling by pouring it into a long casserole dish and refrigerating.

Caramel sauce, cooling in a glass casserole dish.

We've used caramel glaze for all sorts of cakes, from Banana Pound Cake to Apple Bundt Cake, Apple Caramel Cake, and more.

Decorating the Cake

You can spoon the cooled glaze over the cake as with our Maple Pound Cake, but today we used a disposable piping bag with the tip snipped away for a little more control.

Piping Caramel onto cooled Applesauce Cake using a disposable piping bag with the tip snipped away.

Here's the finished cake! We topped it with a sprinkling of toffee bits. We hope that you enjoy this recipe as much as we have!

Applesauce cake, sliced, on a pedestal. It is topped with a caramel glaze and toffee bits.

Recipe FAQs

This applesauce cake is fine at room temperature in an airtight container or under a cake dome or a couple of days. Beyond that, I would move it to the refrigerator for freshness.

If you do refrigerate the cake, it is best to remove it from the refrigerator 2-3 hours before serving. This will allow the cake plenty of time to warm and soften.

Yes, just as with most of our cake recipes (from Buttermilk Pound Cake to Lemon Pound Cake, Hummingbird Cake and more), this cake freezes perfectly!

After the cake has cooled down to warm (or room temperature), place it on a foil-wrapped cake board for support, and wrap it tightly in plastic wrap followed by foil. Into the freezer it goes! It will stay fresh for up to three months.

To thaw, move the wrapped applesauce cake to the refrigerator the day before you need it. Bunt cakes and pound cakes are larger and so they take longer to thaw than layer cakes.

Then, the next morning, move to the kitchen counter and unwrap once the condensation is no longer forming on the wrapping. Then, glaze or decorate as usual.

This applesauce cake is very moist and has a denser texture, along the lines of a pound cake. It has a wonderful spiced flavor!

We have many cake recipes that incorporate softened cream cheese in the cake batter! We find that it adds wonderful moisture without thinning the batter and an additional layer of richness as well.

In our recipes section you'll find many layer cakes that contain cream cheese including Lemon Velvet Cake, White Velvet Cake, Homemade Strawberry Cake, and more.

We also have pound cakes including Lemon Cream Cheese Pound Cake and Cream Cheese Pound Cake. Any of these delicious recipes are sure to please a crowd!

Cake flour has a lower protein content than all purpose flour, which results in a softer and more tender cake. This is because a lower protein content leads to less gluten formation in the cake batter.

Some of our favorite cakes container cake flour. A few examples are our Yellow Cake, White Velvet Cake, Strawberry Cake, and Pear Cake.

More Fall Cake Recipes

We've made many fall cake recipes over the years as well as classic cakes that are popular for the holidays!

Some of our most popular are Pumpkin Cake, Gingerbread Cake, Spice Cake, and our Carrot Cake Recipe!

Have you made this? We would LOVE for you to leave a ⭐️ rating as well as a comment and photo below! We really appreciate your feedback!

Applesauce cake, sliced, on a pedestal. It is topped with a caramel glaze and toffee bits.

Applesauce Cake

BY Melissa and Bebe
This delicious Applesauce Cake is perfect for fall with wonderful apple flavor. We've frosted it with a heavenly, easy-to-make spiced cream cheese frosting!
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 45 minutes
Course: Dessert
Servings: 15 servings
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Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Ingredients

  • 8 oz Cream Cheese, softened (We use one package cream cheese, full fat)
  • 1 ½ sticks unsalted butter, softened (168g total)
  • 2 cups granulated sugar (400g)
  • 4 large eggs, room temperature (to save time you can warm them in a bowl of very warm water for 5 min)
  • 3 cups Cake Flour- see Notes for substitution (342g)
  • 1 teaspoon Baking powder (4g)
  • 1 ½ teaspoons Baking soda (7g)
  • ½ teaspoon Salt (3g)
  • 1 ½ teaspoons Apple Pie Spice (5g)
  • 1 ¼ cup Applesauce (312g)
  • 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract (4g)
  • ⅓ cup Vegetable oil (67g) we used canola oil

Topping

  • We added a sprinkling of toffee bits as a topping (We used Heath toffee bits)

Caramel Sauce

  • ½ stick unsalted butter (57g)
  • 1 cup light brown sugar (packed into measuring cup) (217g)
  • ½ cup heavy cream (126g)
  • ½ teaspoon salt (2g)
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (4g)
  • 1 Tablespoon light corn syrup (18g)

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Grease and flour a tube pan or bundt pan. (Ours was a 15 cup pan with 12 cup baking capacity. This recipe makes 8 cups of batter.)
  • In a medium bowl, whisk the cake flour, apple pie spice, baking powder, baking soda, and salt for 30 seconds and set aside.
  • In another bowl combine the vegetable oil, applesauce, and vanilla extract. Set aside.
  • In the bowl of your mixer, add the butter, cream cheese and mix at medium speed until smooth.
  • Gradually add the sugar and mix at medium speed for 2-3 minutes.
  • Add the room temperature eggs one at a time, mixing after each until the egg yolk has blended.
  • With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and the applesauce mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture (We did 3 additions of the dry mixture, 2 additions of wet). Slightly increase the mixer speed just until combined.
  • Scoop the batter into the prepared bundt pan.
  • Bake at 325 degrees for 40-45 minutes.  Check your cake at about 40 minutes using a long wooden skewer or a toothpick to determine doneness.  Bake until the toothpick  comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. Baking times can vary! It may take longer in your oven.
  • Allow the cake to cool, in the pan, on a cooling rack for 10 minutes before turning out.
  • This recipe makes approximately 8 cups of batter.

Caramel Glaze

  • Using a medium size saucepan (deep enough to prevent boil over) melt the butter over medium heat.
  • Add the brown sugar and the remaining ingredients and heat on medium high heat.
  • Stir to blend, try to keep mixture off the sides of the pan. Once the mixture begins to boil, reduce the heat to low.
  • Simmer for 6 minutes, checking often to make sure that it is not going to boil over. It should still be bubbling. After 6 minutes, remove from heat.
  • Keep in mind that the caramel with thicken up a bit as it cools. You can pour it into a long glass casserole dish if you want it to cool more quickly. We often refrigerate to cool it off as well.
  • Makes about 1 cup caramel sauce. It can be kept in the refrigerator in an airtight container up to 2 weeks.

Notes

Substitution for Cake Flour:

(Using all purpose flour (plain in UK) to make Cake Flour) For each cup of flour in a recipe, remove 2 Tablespoons of flour and replace with 2 Tablespoons cornstarch (cornflour in the UK). This recipe has 3 cups of flour so you will measure out 3 cups of all purpose flour, remove 6 Tablespoons and replace with 6 Tablespoons cornstarch, whisk to blend

Related Recipes

Applesauce Spice Cake Pumpkin Toffee Pecan Pound Cake Sweet Potato Bundt Cake

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8 Comments

  3. 5 stars
    All of your recipes sound delicious but this one sounds heavenly. I love apples and the flavors of fall so this one is perfect for my taste buds. Thank you for sharing your recipes and cake decorating expertise. I really appreciate it.

    Reply

  4. 5 stars
    Melissa, thank you for all the great recipes. Made this applesauce cake for my daughter's birthday, everyone loved it. Cake was moist and delicious.

    Reply

  5. 4 stars
    I believe the temp should be 350 degrees not 325 as the bottom of cake was raw inside , despite my toothpick test had to rebake

    most bundt cakes ( tube cakes ) need the higher heat to cook through

    I added ricotta cheese not cream cheese , absolutely a treat
    delicious cake and delicious caramel sauce , I decorated with toffee bits it showcased it

    Reply

    1. Thanks Mimi, we bake most of our bundt cakes and pound cakes at 325- it is what works best for us as 350 often gets a bit too dark. However, you should do what works best for you, as there is always variation when it comes to ovens, pans, etc.

      So glad that you liked the recipe!

      Reply