Pumpkin Spice Cake~Doctored Cake Mix
Today I'm going to share an amazingly moist and flavorful doctored cake mix Pumpkin Spice Cake recipe!
It's the season for all of the warm, spiced flavors and this Pumpkin Spice Cake is guaranteed to satisfy your cravings! Nobody would guess that this heavenly Pumpkin Cake starts from a simple cake mix!
Make sure to keep this flavorful cake recipe in mind for your Thanksgiving or fall gatherings. It is sure to please a crowd!
Table of Contents
How to Make Pumpkin Spice Cake from Cake Mix
As much as we love a good scratch cake recipe, you can't beat the ease and consistency of a doctored cake mix recipe! They are very forgiving, and there are so many ways to make them your own. Today's cake is a great example of this!
In a mixing bowl, we combined the yellow cake mix, flour, and sugar with eggs, oil, canned pumpkin puree, vanilla, and spices. Mix with an electric mixer for 2 minutes, scooped the batter into the prepared cake pans, and baked.
After cooling the freshly baked pumpkin layers in the pans for five minutes, we turned them out and cooled completely before frosting with cream cheese frosting.
What Frosting goes well with Pumpkin Spice Cake?
*All things pumpkin and spiced deserve a generous slathering of silky smooth Cream Cheese Frosting! You will LOVE this cake with our Spiced Cream Cheese Frosting or Classic Cream Cheese Frosting. The combination is out of this world!
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!
Pumpkin Spice Cake~Doctored Cake Mix
Ingredients
For the Pumpkin Cake Layers
- 1 Package Yellow Cake Mix I used Duncan Hines Classic Yellow 15.25 oz
- ½ cup (100g) Granulated Sugar
- ½ cup All Purpose Flour
- ½ cup (107g) vegetable oil (or you can substitute one stick of melted butter- 113g)
- 1 cup (235g) pumpkin (Not pumpkin pie filling). We use Libby's 100% Pure Pumpkin (canned)
- ½ cup (121g) milk
- 1 teaspoon (4g) vanilla
- 2 teaspoons (6g) ground cinnamon
- 4 eggs
- 1 teaspoon (2g) nutmeg
- ½ teaspoon (1g) ginger
- You could also add chopped pecans or mini chocolate chips as add ins if you like
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease and flour baking two 8 or 9 inch cake pans or a 9 x 13 baking pan (Batter makes great cupcakes too!)
- In the bowl of your mixer, add the cake mix, 5 Tablespoons flour, (hand whisk to blend the flour into the cake mix, sugar, vegetable oil, vanilla, pumpkin, milk, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, and eggs.
- Beat on medium speed for 2 minutes until well blended. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl half way through. Transfer to the cake pans.
- Bake in preheated oven for 25 to 30 min. or until it springs back to the touch.
- Frost with cream cheese frosting or Spiced Cream Cheese Frosting
Notes
Loved This Recipe?!
More Recipes
**Looking for a Pumpkin Spice Cake recipe from scratch? You will love this one! Homemade Pumpkin Spice Cake
For more fall favorites, check out our Fall & Thanksgiving Roundup of Ideas, Recipes, and Tutorials!Thanks for stopping by!
Hi JeanF,
Yes, originally the recipe used a cake mix with 18.25 ounces. I have made it with the current mix size and it was fine. Also, you can whisk in 4 to 6 Tablespoons flour until the mix equals 18.25 oz. and this will give you the same quantity cake batter as the original recipe. This is what I usually do. This is the recommendation of Anne Byrn, the author of The Cake Doctor Books.
This recipe looks wonderful. Can you tell me how many cups of batter it makes in order to determine if I need a 2" or 3" deep round pan. Thanks - I am new to this website and to baking, for that matter.
Hi Mary, I forgot to list the cups of batter this recipe makes but I think about 6 1/2 cups. We used 2 inch deep cake pans for this recipe. I hope you enjoy the cake!
Looks good
Thank you for sharing this recipe This cake is so good and moist will def make again I seen in the mixing directions it calls for water but didn't see water in the measurements so I didn't add any water just wondering if it's suspose to have water also ? Thank you for sharing this delicious cake recipe
Hi Pamela, Thank you for letting me know. I have made the correction, it should read milk instead of water. I'm so happy you enjoyed the cake!!
I want to make this a belly bump cake covered in fondant. Would it be firm enough for me to do that and can a spice cake mix be used to make it "extra spicy?"
This recipe was absolutely delicious! I had a request for a pumpkin spice cake for a baby shower cake. The customer said it was a hit! This will be going into my cake flavor options. (My husband and I ate all the cake trimmings with our morning coffee!)
Hi Debbie, I love the way you decorated your cake......just beautiful! Thanks so much for your nice review, I am so happy it was a hit with your customer. Thank you for posting!
Is it 5 tablespoons of flour or 6
Hi Katrina, Thanks, it is 5.
How much pumpkin pie spice can I use in place of all of the individual spices?