This Gingerbread Cake (doctored cake mix) recipe is moist, so flavorful, and so EASY to make!
We love this recipe year-round, but I especially crave gingerbread in fall and winter months! The taste is amazing, and when paired with our Spiced Cream Cheese Frosting! (You can find it at the end of our post!)
How to Make Easy Gingerbread Man Cake Toppers!
In the photo above, we added a few fun little gingerbread men toppers! They give our cake a little added height and cuteness.
I used a few Pepperidge Farm Ginger Men cookies to make them. Simply flip them over, pipe a little melted candy melts or chocolate on the back, place a lollipop stick into the chocolate, and pipe a bit more chocolate on top, and chill for 5-10 minutes in the freezer until firm.
Next, I angled my gingerbread men at various angles when gluing on the anchors so that they almost look like they're dancing! I just love simple decorations!
You can see below that white candy melts probably wasn't the best choice for a subtle "glue" against the dark gingerbread...maybe I'll use plain (brown) chocolate candy melts next time! Ha!
I outlined them in buttercream for added cuteness but you can see that I kept things very simple! Anyway, they make me smile. When you're ready to place them into the cake, the lollipop sticks make great great anchors.
Ta da! Now this is a happy cake!
How Many Cake Layers?
For our gingerbread layer cake pictured above, we made two thick 8 inch cake layers, which we torted into four layers. It would have worked great as a two layer cake also, but we wanted a bit more filling!
Delicious Spiced Cream Cheese Frosting
Our FAVORITE frosting for gingerbread cakes and all things spiced is our Spiced Cream Cheese Frosting! So simple to whip up in minutes and the flavor is fantastic!
Gingerbread House Cake!
Not only is this a delicious recipe, but it is sturdy enough for fondant as well as light carving. This was the recipe that we used for our Gingerbread House Cake Video Tutorial in our member cake video section.
Scratch Version of Gingerbread Cake
Finally, if you are looking for a fabulous scratch Gingerbread Layer Cake Recipe, we have a great one!! You can find it here: Scratch Gingerbread Cake Recipe. We love them both!
Sharing More Holiday Cake Recipes and Tutorials!
Looking for even more Doctored Cake Mix recipes for the holidays? Don't miss our Doctored Red Velvet Cake recipe or our Doctored Eggnog Cake Recipe! These easy and DELICIOUS recipes are sure to please any crowd!
For a full roundup of our FAVORITE Christmas and winter cakes, don't miss our Roundup of Christmas Cake Recipes, Tutorials, and Ideas!
We Have More Cake Mix Recipes to Share!
If you love working with doctored cake mix recipes, we've made many over the years that we just love! Scroll through this quick list and pick out a few more to try!
Thanks for stopping by! We hope that you enjoy this delicious Gingerbread Doctored Cake Mix Recipe!
Gingerbread Cake ~ A Doctored Cake Mix Recipe
This easy and delicious Gingerbread Layer Cake starts with a simple cake mix! This recipe is a fantastic choice for fall and winter gatherings! We love it with our Spiced Cream Cheese Frosting!
Ingredients
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour two 8 inch cake pans (We torted our layers to make 4)
- Do not follow ingredients on the back of the cake mix box, use the ingredients listed below.
- 1 box Spice Cake Mix, sifted
- 1 cup (121g) all purpose flour
- 1 cup (200g) granulated sugar
- ½ (3 g) teaspoon salt
- 1 cup (242 g) sour cream
- ½ cup (118 g) water
- ½ cup (161g) Molasses,
- 3 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon (3 g) cinnamon
- 1 ½ teaspoon (3 g) ginger
- ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
- *For our Cake Toppers we used store-bought Gingerbread men and attached them to lollipop sticks with melted candy melts!
Spiced Cream Cheese Frosting
- 1 cup (2 sticks) (226g) unsalted butter, softened (do not soften in microwave)
- 3 (8 ounces) (226g) per package full fat cream cheese, (total 678g) cut into 1 inch pieces and softened.....do not use reduced fat cream cheese or cream in tub containers (do not soften in microwave)
- 3 cups (343g) powdered sugar
- 2 teaspoons (4g) Pumpkin Pie Spice * (we list substitution below)
- 2 teaspoons (8g) vanilla extract
Instructions
In the bowl of your mixer combine the dry ingredients and whisk 30 seconds to throughly combine.
To this add the remaining ingredients and mix on medium speed for 1 minute ( a bit longer if using a hand held mixer). Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl and mix 1 minute more.
Makes approximately 7 cups of batter.
Pour into prepared pans and bake at 325 degrees. Check at 35 minutes, the cake will be slightly pulled away from the sides of the pan and a toothpick inserted in the center should pull out clean or with only a few crumbs.
For the Spiced Cream Cheese Frosting
Put the softened butter in the bowl of your mixer and mix until smooth.
Add the powdered sugar, vanilla, and pumpkin spice. Beat on medium speed for 2 to 3 minutes (longer if using a hand mixer) until light and fluffy. Scrape the bowl midway through.
Add the pieces of softened cream cheese to the mixing bowl. The cream cheese should be soft enough that it combines easily into the butter/powdered sugar mixture. Beat on low/medium speed about 1 minute or until the cream cheese is blended in.
Makes 6 cups
Use immediately or refrigerate. If you have beaten too long and it is too soft to pipe, just refrigerate a while and let it firm up.
**No pumpkin spice? You can use 1 teaspoon cinnamon, ¼ teaspoon nutmeg, ½ teaspoon ground ginger, ¼ teaspoon cloves. There is some "wiggle room" with this if you prefer a stronger flavor of one spice over another.
Notes
This gingerbread cake recipe is delicious, and works great with the carving necessary for our Gingerbread House Cake Video Tutorial in our member library. I hope that you enjoy it!
Delicious recipe and is definitely a keeper. I did find it to be a tad sweeter than I want and seemed pretty moist which is a good thing of course but may have been a bit moist for my project. I likely needed to bake another 5 mn even though toothpick test was clean. Was wondering if i could cut the sugar a bit without affecting the recipe too much. This might help with both these issues and by how much would you suggest? Thanks!
I forgot to mention in earlier post that i used the super moist 15.25 oz betty crocker mix. thanks!
Made this for my sister's Birthday. Following the recipe for cupcakes. Best spice cake recipe. It was delicious, very moist. Half of the cupcakes with vanilla bean frosting, the other half pumpkin spice
Hi Mayumi, I'm glad you enjoyed the recipe. Thank you for posting
5* recipe. Thank you for sharing this delicious recipe. I love my gingersnap cookie recipe so I wanted to try this. It's a great way to start the fall. I used buttermilk in lieu of water and it was yummy & moist. I used 3 8" pans and it worked great. The cake was easy to handle and stack just after cooling. I added 1 tsp. maple extract to the frosting and it complimented the ginger cake nicely. I'm excited to try some of your other recipes.
I'm happy you enjoyed the recipe, thanks so much for posting!
Can this cake be made a 9x13? How long and what temp?
I made this for a holiday potluck at work today.... I needed a QUICK Plan B (the dog got on our table and ate a big chunk out of the cake I made from scratch). I make the cake and frosting before work, and iced it midday after the cake layers cooled... didn't have any cookies to decorate with so I used pecans and dried cranberries (chopped). Thanks for the great recipe!
Hi Heather! Oh my goodness, so sorry that your dog decided to have a quick taste test of the first cake! So glad that it all worked out for Plan B- your cake looks fabulous!
Thank you! Had to do 'one more thing' for the holidays and it involved getting a box of Betty Crocker Gingerbread cake mix-- something that is EVERYWHERE at every time of year except at 7am on Christmas eve. Was at my second grocery store and resigned to making the cake from scratch (which is anxiety-inducing for me) or going with my backup dessert (also anxiety-inducing when folks are expecting something) when I had the bright idea to google a hack and this recipe popped up. Bless. Also cheers for the 'skip to the recipe' button-- when you're short on time and running on adrenaline it is VERY helpful to be able to get right to what you need. Have a wonderful holiday season!
@Liz- Yay! So happy that you found the recipe- there's nothing like searching for a plan B at the last minute- we really like this cake- hope you enjoy it! Merry Christmas ;0)
Even though it is April in Florida and warm and sunny, we used your cake recipe this weekend to make a birthday cake. It was carved into a dome and it worked perfectly. The taste is incredible....just like Christmas. Thank you for the easy and perfect cake recipe.
Hi Aimee, thank you for your nice review of the recipe. I am so happy all went well and you enjoyed the cake.