Orange Spice Cake- A Doctored Cake Mix Recipe
Fall is the season of spice cakes! Today's Orange Spice Cake recipe is a new favorite of ours-- and it is so easy to make with a cake mix!
This Orange Spice Layer Cake is bursting with so much flavor-- I've never tried adding orange to spice cakes before and now that I have, I never want to go back.
Table of Contents
How to Make Orange Spice Cake with a Cake Mix
**You can find the full, printable cake recipe below but here is a basic rundown!:
After preheating the oven to 325 degrees, grease and flour three 8x2 round cake pans. (You could also make two thick 8 inch cake layers but I like the additional layer of cream cheese filling that three layers gives us!)
In the bowl of your mixer, combine dry ingredients and whisk at least 30 seconds to blend. In another bowl, combine sour cream, water, eggs, & flavorings and zest.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix on medium speed for 2 minutes. Stop after 1 minute to scrape the sides and bottom of bowl then continue to beat for the second minute.
Pour into prepared pans and bake at 325 degrees....check at 25 minutes to see if middle of cake springs back when touched, a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake come out clean or with just a few crumbs attached, and the cake will be slightly pulled away from the pan.
Orange Spice Cream Cheese Frosting
I absolutely love cream cheese frosting on spice cakes, and so went with a spiced cream cheese frosting with a little extra orange added!
You'll notice that the recipe calls for a little orange extract- I just wanted to give it a little boost of extra orange flavor without having to add a lot of liquid to the frosting (since cream cheese frostings are softer than buttercream).
The orange extract is optional- if you don't have any on hand, you can just add additional zest. Plain cream cheese frosting is a great choice also.
This is such an easy frosting recipe and tastes SO good!
I frosted the cake in our Orange Spice Cream Cheese Frosting, and textured around the sides with a small offset spatula.
For the piping on top, I used a piping tip 1M and also added additional orange zest!
Looking for more Fall Cake Recipes? Don't miss these favorites!
These are just a few of our favorite fall cakes! We've made so many over the years-- You can find our full roundup here: Roundup of the BEST Fall Cake Recipes!
Enjoy the Recipe!
We hope that you enjoy this Orange Spice Cake as much as we have! If you give it a try, we'd love to hear what you think in the comments below!
Orange Spice Cake- A Doctored Cake Mix Recipe
Ingredients
For the Orange Spice Cake Layers
- 1 box Spice Cake Mix, sifted ( we used Duncan Hines 15.25 oz.)
- 1 cup (121g) all purpose flour
- 1 cup (200g) granulated sugar
- generous dash of salt
- 1 cup (242g) sour cream or plain yogurt (greek yogurt is fine also)
- 1 cup (240g) orange juice
- 1 Tablespoon Orange Zest (about 1 medium sized orange)
- 3 whole eggs
- 2 teaspoons (8g)vanilla
For the Orange Spice Cream Cheese Frosting
- 1 ½ cups (3 sticks) (339g) unsalted butter, softened
- 1 ½ packages ( (339 g) (8 ounces packages) cream cheese (soften just slightly
- and cut into pieces to add to bowl
- 2 teaspoons (4g) cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon (1g) nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger (2g) *sift if clumpy
- 1 teaspoon orange flavoring (4g)
- 1.5 Tablespoons Orange Zest (adjust to your liking)
- 6 to 6 ½ cups (690g - 748g) more if needed confectioners’ sugar, sifted
Instructions
For the Orange Spice Cake
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
Grease and flour three 8x2 round cake pans.
In the bowl of your mixer, combine dry ingredients and whisk at least 30 seconds to blend. In another bowl, combine sour cream, orange juice, eggs, & flavorings and zest.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix on medium speed for 2 minutes. Stop after 1 minute to scrape the sides and bottom of bowl then continue to beat for the second minute.
Pour into prepared pans and bake at 325 degrees....check at 35 minutes to see if middle of cake springs back when touched, a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake come out clean or with just a few crumbs attached, and the cake will be slightly pulled away from the pan.
We bake at 325 degrees to decrease the height of the dome on the cakes.
Makes about 7 cups of batter. Works well for cupcakes too!
Orange Spice Cream Cheese Frosting
Using your mixer, beat the butter and cream cheese on medium speed until well blended.
Add the flavoring, zest, and spices. With the mixer on low speed gradually add the confectioners’ sugar and mix until it is a good piping consistency.
Sounds yummy! :-)
I am a member of your Cake School and love your decorating ideas. However I don't care for recipes that include a doctored cake mix. I am Australian and we think that it is generally lazy to use a mix, not to mention all the additives. Just my opinion!!
I'm not too sure about the frosting: equal parts cream cheese and butter just doesn't seem right. The picture of the icing going on the cake looks like it's too soft and kind of greasy? Could you address that issue?
Hi Diane- The frosting is really good! It is not greasy-- It is fairly soft, as is true with any cream cheese frosting. If you were to remove the cream cheese, it would be much like an American buttercream recipe. We have many different cream cheese frosting recipes on our site- with various proportions of cream cheese & butter. You can doctor this one to your liking but for me, it worked perfectly with the cake and gave me plenty of frosting to work with. I would never post a recipe that I didn't love.
Hi Faye- We have tons of scratch recipes in our recipes section, including a scratch Pecan Spice Cake that would be a great alternative for you. I don't consider doctored cake mixes to be lazy at all-- and this one tastes fabulous. It just comes down to personal preference. We try to keep a good balance between scratch & cake mix recipes as there is a high demand for both.
I love the box cake recipes, however i follow the instructions but they still fall in the middle of the cake, and they seem to come out kind of gummy. What am i doing wrong?
As usual another homerun with this recipe. I made it yesterday and it is awesome! Thank you!!
The recipe calls for 1 1/2 packages of cream cheese. What size package? 3 ounce or 8 ounce?
Hi Bobbye, I use 8 ounce packages. I have added that information to the recipe. Thank you.
Thank you so much! I’ve followed y'all for years!
It makes us happy to know that, thank you, Bobbye!
What number of ounces in the spice cake mix? Over the years, they have reduced from 18 ounces down to 15. I don’t want a gummy texture, I will buy the second box for the correct amount if your recipe is based on 18+ ounces. I think Duncan Hines mixes are currently 15.25 unless they have shrunk them again.
Thanks
Martha
Hi Martha, Thanks for posting, I should have added that information. Our Duncan Hines cake mix was 15.25 ounces. I will add that to the recipe. I hope you will enjoy the cake.