Pecan Spice Pound Cake
This rich and flavorful Pecan Spice Pound Cake is simple to make and perfect for fall! It is moist with a tight crumb, and fantastic flavor from warm spices, pecans, and a homemade caramel glaze.
Table of Contents
Why We Love It
There are so many reasons to love this Spice Pound Cake!
- Simple To Make
- Moist, tight crumb and perfectly dense (as any pound cake should be)!
- Warm spices of cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger
- Perfect fall cake recipe!
How to Make Pecan Spice Cake
You can find the full, printable spice pound cake recipe at the bottom of this post. Here is a quick look at our steps!
- Grease and flour a tube pan. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F
- Sprinkle the bottom of the prepared pan with ½ cup of chopped pecans.
- In a separate bowl whisk the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and baking powder to combine, set aside for later.
- Cream the butter with the paddle attachment in your mixer, gradually add the white and brown sugar and beat until light and fluffy 3 to 5 minutes.
- Add the eggs one at a time blending after each to incorporate. Then, add the vanilla extract.
- While mixing at low speed, add the flour mixture alternately with the sour cream to the butter, sugar, & egg mixture. Begin and end with the dry ingredients. (I add the flour mixture three times and the sour cream twice). Mix just until incorporated. Gently stir in ¾ cup of chopped pecans. Scoop the batter into the prepared bundt or tube pan.
- Bake at 325 degrees for 70-74 minutes. Baking times may vary and so check on the cake as it nears the 1 hour mark. When an inserted toothpick comes out clean or with just a few moist crumbs attached, it is ready.
- Allow to cool in the pan for about 10 minutes on a wire rack before turning it out.
Caramel Glaze
We topped our cake with an easy caramel glaze. This spice pound cake is great even without the caramel, but it does add a delicious layer of flavor!
As usual, the glaze is a simple combination of brown sugar, butter, heavy cream, vanilla, a pinch of salt, and a bit of corn syrup (to help keep sugar crystals from forming).
This glaze is prepared in a saucepan on the stovetop, and it thickens as it cools. You can spoon it over the cooled pound cake, or drizzle it on top using a disposable piping bag with the tip snipped away. So good!
More Pound Cakes
We have many more pound cake and bundt cake recipes to share with you, including fall favorites like Maple Pound Cake, Pumpkin Pound Cake, and Gingerbread Pound Cake.
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!
Pecan Spice Pound Cake
Ingredients
- 3 sticks unsalted butter, softened (339g)(This is 1 ½ cups)
- ½ cup white sugar (100g)
- 2½ cups light brown sugar (520g)
- 5 large eggs room temperature (If in a hurry, place the eggs in a bowl of warm water for 5 minutes.)
- 3 cups cake flour (342g)
- ½ teaspoon baking powder (2g)
- 1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon (4g)
- 1 teaspoon nutmeg (2g)
- ½ teaspoon ground ginger (1g)
- 1 cup sour cream (242g)
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract (12g)
- 1¼ cup Chopped Pecans, divided (½ cup will be used at the bottom of the pan, and ¾ cup will be folded into the batter.)
For the Caramel Glaze (Optional)
- ½ stick unsalted butter 57g
- 1 cup light brown sugar 200g
- ½ cup heavy cream 126g
- ½ teaspoon salt 2g
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 4g
- 1 tablespoon light corn syrup optional (18g) This helps to prevent sugar crystals from forming
Instructions
- Grease and flour a tube pan. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F
- Sprinkle the bottom of the prepared pan with ½ cup of chopped pecans.
- In a separate bowl whisk the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and baking powder to combine, set aside for later.
- Cream the butter with the paddle attachment in your mixer, gradually add the white and brown sugar and beat until light and fluffy 3 to 5 minutes.
- Add the eggs one at a time blending after each to incorporate.
- Add the vanilla extract.
- While mixing at low speed, add the flour mixture alternately with the sour cream to the butter, sugar, & egg mixture. Begin and end with the dry ingredients. (I add the flour mixture three times and the sour cream twice). Mix just until incorporated.
- Gently stir in ¾ cup of chopped pecans. Scoop the batter into the prepared bundt or tube pan.
- Bake at 325 degrees for 70-74 minutes. Baking times may vary and so check on the cake as it nears the 1 hour mark. When an inserted toothpick comes out clean or with just a few moist crumbs attached, it is ready.
- This makes approximately 8-8.5 cups of batter.
- Allow to cool in the pan for about 10 minutes on a wire rack before turning it out.
For the 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.
- Once the cake and caramel have cooled, you can either spoon the caramel over the cake, or for more control, add to a disposable piping bag with the tip snipped away or to a ziplock bag with a bit of the corner snipped away and drizzle onto the cake.