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Spice Cake with Orange Spice Cream Cheese Frosting

Last Updated On: November 25, 2024 | Published: November 03, 2020 by Melissa Diamond | 19 Comments
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This super moist spice cake is everything that you want in a cake- it is fluffy, tender, and has wonderful flavor.

Homemade Spice Cake with Orange Spice Cream Cheese Frosting- So delicious and perfect for fall and winter celebrations!!

We've filled and frosted this delicious spice cake with our orange spice cream cheese frosting.

The orange flavor in this recipe complements this spice cake perfectly, and we love to pair our spice cakes with cream cheese frostings! 

If you're a fan of spice cakes, keep this homemade cake recipe in mind for your fall and winter celebrations.

Orange Spice Cream Cheese Frosting

How to Make Spice Layer Cake

*You can find the full, printable spice cake recipe further down, but here is a quick rundown!

We use the traditional method of mixing for this spice cake, which gives us soft, fluffy cake layers.
 
Preheat: First, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F, and grease and flour three 8 inch cake pans- we like to add a circle of parchment paper to the bottom also to prevent sticking!
 
Flour Mixture: In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and spices (ground cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger).  Whisk for 30 seconds to ensure that the dry ingredients are aerated and evenly distributed.
 
Buttermilk Mixture/Wet Ingredients: In another bowl, add the buttermilk, vegetable oil and vanilla extract.  Set aside.
 
Butter and Sugar: In the bowl of your electric mixer (fitted with a paddle attachment if using a stand mixer), add the softened butter and mix at medium speed until smooth.  Gradually add the granulated sugar and brown sugar . Continue to mix on medium speed for 3 to 5 minutes  (a bit longer if using hand mixer) until lightened in color and fluffy.
 
Eggs: Next, add the room temperature eggs one at a time, mixing until the yellow of the yolk is blended.
 
Alternating Dry & Wet Ingredients: With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and the buttermilk mixture, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients (3 additions of dry ingredients and 2 of wet ingredients). After the last addition, mix just until combined.
 
Fill the Pans and Bake! Finally, we divided the batter between our three 8 inch cake pans and baked at 350 degrees F for 23-28 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached.
 
Another sign of doneness is that if it springs back when the center of the cake is lightly touched, it's ready. Let cool in pans 5 to 10 minutes on a wire rack before turning out.
 
 
Homemade Spice Cake with Orange Spice Cream Cheese Frosting- So delicious and perfect for fall!
 
 

 

Orange Spice Cream Cheese Frosting

For this homemade spice cake recipe, we went with an easy and delicious Orange Spice Cream Cheese Frosting. We used it as our filling too- the flavor is SO good and you can whip up a batch in no time! 

This is a simple combination of softened butter, cream cheese, nutmeg, cinnamon, ground ginger, orange zest, and confectioners sugar.

Decorating the Cake

To decorate, I used a star piping tip 21 to create the reverse shell borders around the top of the cake. Around the sides of the cake, I just gave the frosting a textured look with my offset spatula.

*Remember that cream cheese frostings like this Orange Spice frosting are softer than American Buttercream frostings.

If the frosting becomes too soft as you are working with it, you can pop it in the refrigerator for a few minutes to firm it back up again.

Recipe FAQs

Yes, because of the spiced cream cheese frosting, this cake should be refrigerated (in an airtight container or under a cake dome).

However for the best flavor and texture, it is best to move the cake from the refrigerator to the kitchen counter a couple of hours before serving. This will allow time for it to warm and soften.

Yes! Just as with most of our cake recipes (from carrot cake to Chai Cake, lemon cake, pumpkin spice cake and more), these layers freeze beautifully.

After cooling the layers until slightly warm (or room temperature), wrap each cake layer individually in plastic wrap followed by aluminum foil. For more support, you can place each layer on its own foil-wrapped cake board first if you would like.

To thaw, move the spice cake layers to the kitchen counter. Leave wrapped for about 30-45 minutes and then unwrap. Thaw to desired amount for assembling the cake.

Aside from today's Orange Spice Cream Cheese frosting, we have more frosting options for you!

A simple cream cheese frosting is also a great choice, as well as our orange cream cheese frosting,  whipped cream cheese frosting, classic buttercream frosting and more.

You can hop over to our Frosting Recipes Section for even more ideas!

Buttermilk is a really helpful ingredient in cake recipes because the boost of acidity softens the tough strands of gluten in the cake batter. This makes for a softer, more tender cake.

We have many cakes that call for buttermilk, including vanilla buttermilk cake, buttermilk pound cake, marble cake, and homemade white cake just to name a few!

More Fall Cakes

We have added many popular fall cake recipes over the years! Some of our favorites are Pumpkin Spice Cake, Gingerbread Cake, and Sweet Potato Cake. Here are a few more of our favorites!

If you love caramel cakes, spice cakes, pumpkin cakes and more, you've come to the right place. You can find more delicious, moist cake recipes for fall in our Collection of the BEST Fall Cake Recipes! 

If you are interested in cake design, make sure to check out our fall cake decorating designs as well!

Moist and Delicious Spice Cake from Scratch

We hope that you enjoy this spice cake recipe! Make sure to check out our collection favorite cake recipes from scratch as well as box cake mix recipes! 

Also, if you are interested in learning how to decorate cakes, we have hundreds of free cake decorating tutorials for you!

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!

Moist and Delicious Spice Cake

Spice Cake with Orange Spice Cream Cheese Frosting

BY Melissa and Bebe
This scratch Spice Cake with Orange Spice Cream Cheese Frosting is moist and fluffy and has wonderful flavor! We love this cake year-round but especially for fall and winter gatherings!
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 25 minutes
Course: Cakes and Cupcakes
Servings: 15 servings
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Ingredients

For the Spice Cake Layers

  • 1 ½ sticks unsalted butter, slightly softened (170g)
  • 3 large eggs room temperature
  • 1 cup white sugar (200g)
  • 1 cup light brown sugar (packed into measuring cup) (217g)
  • 3 cups cake flour ( if you do not have cake flour, see Note below) (342g)
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder (8g)
  • ½ teaspoons baking soda (3g)
  • 1 teaspoon salt (6g)
  • 2 teaspoons cinnamon (6g)
  • 1 teaspoon nutmeg (2g)
  • 1 teaspoon ground ginger (1g)
  • 1 ¼ cups buttermilk (296g)
  • ⅓ cup vegetable oil, we use canola oil (64g)
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (6g)

Orange Spice Cream Cheese Frosting

  • 1 ½ cups 3 sticks (339g) unsalted butter, softened (339g)
  • 1 ½ packages cream cheese, softened (339g)
  • 2 teaspoons cinnamon (4g)
  • ½ teaspoon nutmeg (1g)
  • 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 confectioners’ sugar, sifted (690g-748g)

Instructions

For the Spice Cake Layers

  • Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F, grease, flour and add a circle of parchment or waxed paper to three 8x2 inch round pans
  • In a medium bowl,  add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and spices.  Whisk for 30 seconds to blend.  Set aside.
  • In another bowl, add the buttermilk, oil and vanilla.  Set aside.
  • In the bowl of your mixer, add the butter and ix at medium speed until smooth.  Gradually add the sugars (white and brown). 
  • Continue to mix on medium speed for 3 to 5 minutes  (a bit longer if using hand mixer) until lightened in color and fluffy.
  • Add the room temperature eggs one at  a time mixing until the yellow of the yolk disappears.
  • With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and the buttermilk mixture, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients (3 additions of dry ingredients and 2 of liquid ingredients). After last addition, mix just until combined.
  • Bake at 350 degrees  for 23 to  28 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. Let cool in pans 5 to 10 minutes then turn out.  

For the 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.

Notes

No Cake Flour? Here is a Substitution: If you do not have cake flour, measure out 3 cups of all purpose flour (plain flour in the UK).  Remove 6 tablespoons ( 42g) and replace with 6 Tablespoons cornstarch (42g) (cornflour in the UK).  Whisk to blend the flour and cornstarch.
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19 Comments

  2. 5 stars
    We absolutely love this cake. I have made it the last 3 Christmas. However, it’s just 3 of us. If I wanted to try sheet cake in 9x13, how long would you cook? Thanks

    Reply

    1. Hi Melissa! Happy to hear it! ;0) - If doing a sheet cake, I would start checking for doneness at about the 30 minute mark and then adjust time as needed.

      Reply

    1. Hi Nia, yes that should work fine. I would say probably about 45-50 minutes but peek in a bit before that and adjust time as needed. You may need to add additional time based on size of the pan, etc.

      Reply